REESE  LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


p^K-Jr^ri? 


\- 


V** 

UNIVERSITY* 

C  'OF 


SPEECH 

OF 

MR.  JARNAGIN,  OF  TENNESSEE, 

ON  THE 

TREATY  FOR  THE  ANNEXATION  OF  TEXAS, 


Delivered  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  in  Executive  Session,  June  6,  1944. 


The  Treaty  annexing  Texas  (o  the  United  States,  and  also  the  resolutions  offer- 
ed by  the  Senator  from  Missouri,  (Mr.  BENTON,)  on  that  subject,  being  undec 
consideration — 

Mr.  J^\RNAGIX  said  :  I  will  ask  the  indulgence  of  the  Senate  while  I  submit 
the  reasons  which  have  determined  me  to  vote  against  the  Treaty  now  under 
discussion.  Upon  this  subject.,  the  first  question  to  us,  beyond  all  doubt, in  mag- 
nitude as  in  sacrednees,  is  the  constitutionality  of  the  act  proposed  to  be  done 
under  the  authority  of  the  treaty  -  making  power.  For,  after  all,  the  rules  of  mere 
national  law  are  ofien  violated  with  impunity  for  the  sake  of  policy,  personal  in- 
terest, and  national  aggrandizement.  We  did  not  establish  that  code  :  it  is,  in 
many  points,  unsettled  ;  in  others,  we  have  refused  to  conform  to  it:  but  we  are 
inextricably  hound,  by  direct  faiih,  to  the  principles  we  have  deliberately  set  up 
*for  our  guides  at  home  and  abroad-  By  common  avowal,  no  temporary  good, 
poweyer  desirable  in  itself,  can  compensate  a  direct  violation  of  the  Constitution  j 
for  the  latter  extends  over  the  whole  future,  and  breaks  down  every  security  to 
us  as  a  people. 

The  Constitution  has  given,  and  could  give,  no  such  authority  as  that  now 
assumed  by  the  treaty-making  power.  It  is  a  strictly  extra  and  ultra-constitu- 
tional one;  for  a  Constitution  is  an  agreement  between  the  parties  to  it.  If  it  is 
that  of  a  single  society,  then  the  parties  are  the  body  of  its  citizens.  If  it.  is  a 
compact,  between  several  societies,  forming  by  it  a  federative  league,  it  is  these 
separately  who  make  the  parlies  to  it.  Ifi  either  case,  to  introduce  or  exclude  a 
member  cannot  be  within  the  scope  of  the  compact;  because  it  would  vary  the 
"parties,  and  so  terminate  the  agreement.  The  terms  of  the  instrument  itself 
could  in  no  manner  bestow  a  power  contrary  to  this  condition,  inherent  in  the 
'contract  itself,  and  incapable  of  being  excluded  from  it.  Legally  to  alter  thesea 
the  special  assent,  of  each  parly  must  precede  the  act.  If  done  arbitrarily,  with*- 
out  that  assent,  the  act,  though  void  in  itself,  may  be  rendered  subsequently  va- 
lid by  the  direct  consent  or  ihe  acquiescence  of  the  original  parties,  who  wouldi 
thus,  with  the  new  member,  form  a  new  league,  upon  the  terms  of  the  old ;  but,, 
this  done,  it  would  be  precisely  as  before.  The  fact  just  accomplished  would 
only  reinstate  the  same  indefeasible  conditions  between  new  parties.  It  would 
bestow,  no  matter  how  often  repeated,  no  power  among  the  parties  to  act 
otherwise,  as  to  a  new  change  of  those  parties,  than  by  the  special  assent  of 
each  to  that  change,  to  be  given  by  the  people  themselves,  according  to  the  form 
they  may  prescribe.  No  act  of  this  sort  could,  therefore,  confer  a  power,  or  con-* 
stitute  a  precedent.  This  is  the  true  answer  to  the  alleged  precedent  of  our  ac» 

' 

#  ,36 


quisition  of  Louisiana  and  Florida,  which  are  now  properly  a  part  of  the  United 
States,  upon  the  principles  just  declared. 

But  even  upon  less  comprehensive  grounds,  these  two  facts  confer  no  authority. 
Mr.  Jefferson,  the  author,  (it  may  be  said,)  because  the  originator  of  both,  avow- 
ed the  one  which  he  himself  accomplished,  to  be  unequivocally  beyond  the  pow- 
ers of  this  Government  by  treaty,  and  urged  that,  to  make  it  valid,  the  nation 
should  ratify  it  by  a  constituiional  act,  thereby  getting  the  consent  of  the  people, 
and  not  alone  that  of  the  President  and  Senate.  He  obviously  proposed,  how- 
ever, only  a  special  confirmation,  not  the  embodiment  of  any  general  provision^ 
or  future  rule  or  precedent,  for  the  treaty-making  power.  Those  acts,  then,  were 
done  in  contemplation  of  a  constitutional  ratification,  held  by  the  author  himself 
necessary  to  legalize  them  ;  and  that  ratification  has  been  neglected.  If,  then? 
resorted  to  as  precedents,  it  is  directly  in  the  face  of  his  authority,  as  they  never 
were  rendered  constitutional,  as  he  thought  they  would  have  to  be  rendered,  but 
became  valid  by  acquiescence.  Besides,  he  wished  to  make  of  them  special  ca- 
ses, legitimatized  by  a  subsequent  consent,  to  cure  a  past  wrong,  not  to  give  a  future 
Or  further  authority.  The  act  thus  avowed,  by  its  very  authors,  unconstitutional, 
and  held  ever  since  by  the  world  to  be  so,  is  surely  the  very  last  that  can  be  erect- 
ed into  a  constitutional  precedent,  and  cannot  be  urged,  with  propriety,  by  those 
who  now  attempt  to  avail  themselves  of  it ;  for  we  have  in  our  history  many  cases- 
of  acts  done  as  constitutional,  to  which,  as  precedents,  all  authority  is  denied  by 
them,  and  yet  they  here  attempt  to  make  a  decisive  precedent  of  that  which  no 
man  ever  took  to  be  constitutional  af  all ! 

The  force  of  these  reasons,  even  as  stated  in  a  far  less  conclusive  form,  is  con- 
fessed by  the  many  evasive  methods  taken  to  avoid  them — this  juggling  of  call- 
ing it  "  re-annexation,"  or  that,  of  pleading  a  political  necessity,  purely  fictitious,, 
or  some  pretended  engagement  contracted,  or  right  obtained  by  our  having  recog- 
nised the  independence  of  Texas,  or  the  slight-of-hand  trick  of  bringing  her  in 
as  a  territory,  not  a  State,  by  one  branch  of  the  Government  alone.  These 
grounds  convey  not  only  no  slight  avowal  of  the  absence  of  any  solid  form  of 
doing  the  thing  but  by  a  resort  O  the  people  or  their  representatives,  but  are 
subversive  of  all  constitutional  restraint,  call  in  for  their  instruments  all  sorts  of 
violations  of  domestic  and  foreign  obligations,  remit  for  the  purpose  unbounded 
powers  to  the  Executive,  and  are  in  many  particulars  directly  in  conflict  with 
each  other,  or  with  the  motives  or  excuses  alleged  in  behalf  of  other  points  in 
this  scheme.  We  will  examine  them  in  their  order. 

The  term  "  re-annexation  "  is  meant  to  convey  the  idea  that  we  have,  some 
how  or  other,  a  subsisting  right  to  the  country  of  Texas,  so  that,  not  being  a  for- 
fcign  one,  it  can  be  legally  incorporate^  in  our  Government.  It  is  easy  to  see 
that,  to  the  full  extent  to  which  this  supplies  a  cure  for  any  constitutional  difficul- 
ty, it  is  fatal  to  other  capital  pretences  set  up  or  acts  done.  It  utterly  overthrows 
our  own  allegation  that  Texas  is  independent  and  capable  of  being  a  party  to  a 
treaty  :  it  is  in  direct  conflict  with  all  the  terms  and  objects  of  that  instrument : 
il  renders  ridiculous  our  avowals  to  Mexico,  and  especially  our  final  measure  of 
buying  her  out :  and  as  to  our  complaints  of  England  and  her  intermeddling,  it 
joints  conclusively  to  what  should  have  been  our  course — to  let  the  British  Go- 
•vernment  know  that  one  of  its  public  agents  was  making  mischief,  under  pre- 
tence of  a  Royal  commission,  in  our  territory,  and  that  we  received  diplomatic 
personages  here,  and  not  in  Texas.  It  is  worse  still  as  to  Mexico.  With  her  we 
acknowledge  ourselves,  in  every  way,  to  be  strictly  at  peace :  we  keep  envoys  at 
her  capital :  we  allege  no  subsisting  wrongs,  for  she  amicably  and  honorably 
meets  and  settles  all  complaints  :  in  fine,  whatever  may  be  said  against  her  cruel- 
"ties  and  barbarism,  we  cannot  withhold  the  admission,  that  her  national  conduct 
Awards  us  is  most  friendly,  exemplary,  full  of  faith.  And  yet,  all  this  while, 


^'1£S^^ 

: 


'  rig'"  of  T««8  heLlf,  as  £ 


tained  uninterrupted  possession,  at  all  times,  up  to  the  Sabine.  What  more  need 
be  said?  If  permanent  occupation  confers  at  last  a  territorial  right,  and  that  of 
France  to  Louisiana,  as  she  held  it  to  the  Mermento,  was  good,  that  of  Spain 
to  Texas,  up  to  the  same  actual  limit,  was  better,  because  older.  In  a  word,  it 
was  possession  alone  that  made  any  real  title  for  either.  All  the  rest  was  much 
like  the  style  but  lately  abandoned  by  the  English  monarchs,  which  included, 
as  a  part  of  their  dominions,  France,  where  they  had  not  had  a  foot  of  land  for 
centuries;  or,  like  their  keeping  the  title  of  ''defenders  of  the  faith,"  bestowed 
by  the  Pope,  long  after  they  had  turned  Protestants. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  it  was  not  only  France  that  claimed  Texas  to  the 
Rio  Grande,  but  Spain  that  claimed  Louisiana  as  a  part  of  Florida.  The  one 
went  back  to  discovery  from  1677  to  1685,  the  other  to  discovery  from  1512  to 
1542.  Now,  all  must  grant  that  mere  discovery  must  yield,  as  a  right,  to  regu- 
lar, continued,  uninterrupted  possession.  Discovery  gives  only  the  first  imperfect 
tilaim.  If  not  speedily  followed  by  regular  occupatioa,  that  claim  may  be  super- 
seded by  another  nation,  which  takes  and  keeps  regular  possession,  the  only 
thing  which  can  perfect  a  territorial  right. 

These  are  grounds  which  it  would  be  perfectly  idle  to  dispute.  But  if,  from 
these,  we  choose  to  go  back  to  the  only  ones  which  can  be  set  up  as  of  prior  va- 
lidity, then  it  is  upon  the  mere  fact  of  discovery,  accompanied  with  certain  for- 
malities of  taking  possession,  but  not  a  real  national  settlement,  that  our  claim 
through  France  must  be  set.  up  ;  and  if  this  is  to  be  the  test,  and  not  possession, 
we  must  not  only  fail  to  make  good  our  title  to  Texas,  but  must  lose  that  to  Lou- 
isiana ;  for  the  Spanish  discovery  of  -both  is  full  one  hundred  and  thirty-five 
years  older  than  the  French. 

It  is  perfectly  incontestible  that  Ponce  de  Leon  discovered  and  took  possession 
Of  Florida  in  15 L2 ;  that  Hernando  de  Soto  penetrated  from  it  to  the  Mississippi^ 
about  the  mouth  of  the  Arkansas,  with  near  five  hundred  men,  in  1538  ;  that 
Alonzo  de  Soto  made  his  way  from  that  point  to  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  in 
1541 ;  that  his  force  coasted  back  to  Mexico,  discovering  the  intermediate  region 
in  1542. 

On  the  French  part,  what  can  be  opposed  to  this?  That  in  1677  La  Salle 
Came  down  the  Mississippi  to  the  Arkansas;  that  in  a  second  expedition,  in  1683,, 
he  descended  the  Mississippi  to  its  mouth  ;  and  that  in  a  third  expedition,  (sail- 
ing now  from  France,  as  the  others  came  from  Canada,)  he  landed  in  the  bay 
of  Espiritu  Santo  or  San  Bernardo,  and  there  built  and  held  a  small  fort,  from 
February,  1686,  to  January,  1687;  but  abandoned  it  then,  and  was  driven  off; 
since  which  time,  the  French  right,  if  ever  such  at  all,  became  but  a  claim  found- 
ed on  these  fads,  and  maintained  or  urged  only  in  the  idle  form  of  diplomatic  skir- 
mishes of  words,  against  the  clear,  definite,  undisturbed  possession  by  Spainy 
from  La  Salle's  time  up  to  the  actual  border  of  Louisiana,  as  at  last  settled  une- 
quivocally in  practice,  in  fact,  in  the  jurisdiction  exercised  by  the  nations  respec- 
tively, up  to  the  Mermento.  Then,  whatever  the  old  self-love  of  either  might 
say,  in  the  gasconade  of  claim  or  counter-claim,  the  two  nations,  the  two  tongues? 
inet ;  and  this  last  fact  alone,  were  every  thing  else  silent,  would  be  enough  to 
overthrow  the  entire  allegations  of  the  French.  For  if,  as  I  have  shown,  this 
was  a  question  of  priority,  of  regular  occupation,  of  planting  and  colonizing, 
what  proof  is  so  strong,  or  what  monument  so  lasting  as  that  which  the  geogra- 
phy of  both  countries  affords,  in  the  names  of  all  the  rivers  and  towns  ?  On  one 
«ide  «f  the  Sabine,  they  are  nearly  all  French ;  on  the  other,  all  are  Spanish 
escept  a  few,  founded  within  the  last  twenty  years.  In  a  word,  you  have  only 
to  glance  at  a  gazeteer  or  a  map  of  either  country,  and  to  consider  in  what 
tongue  are  the  names  all  over  its  surface,  in  order  perfectly,  and  beyond  all  argu- 


men  Mo  learn,  what  was  a  Spanish  territory,  and  what  a  French,  where  Louis- 
iana ended  and  where  Texas  began. 

I  enier  not,  therefore,  and  consider  it  totally  useless  to  enter  into  the  long  chi- 
canery of  diplomatists  on  either  part.  To  what  tales  of  travellers,  to  what  geo- 
graphers, to  what  maps,  to  what  former  pretensions  on  either  side  they  may  have 
referred,  is  certainly  not  of  the  slightest  consequence.  What  are  these  things 
worth  against  original  settlement  and  long  established  possession  and  jurisdiction? 
Could  the  Spanish  claim  that  Louisiana  was  included  in  their  great  region  of 
Florida,  (by  their  old  assumption,  stretching  baok  to  Texas,)  shake  the  certainty, 
the  legal  authorities  of  the  French  rights  on  the  Mississippi,  when  they  had  once 
been  suffered  to  establish  themselves  there  without  being  dispossessed?  It  must 
be  granted,  beyond  question,  that  the  first  imperfect  right  there  was  in  favor  of 
the  Spanish ;  but  that  this  was  afterwards  entirely  lost  by  their  failure  to  perfect 
it  by  settlement.  In  like  manner,  of  course,  of  the  Spanish  claim  to  Texas. 
This  had  been  perfected,  and  was,  besides,  upon  historical  testimony,  originally 
much  the  older  as  to  discovery. 

What  the  quibbles  of  negotiators  may  be,  about  matters  the  most  airy,  we  leara 
abundantly  from  cases  of  our  own,  either  yet  pending  or  but  lately  adjusted. — 
From  the  beginning  of  our  national  existence  down  to  1842,  we  had  a  boundary 
question  of  this  sort  with  Great  Britain,  of  almost  indefinite  extension.  Yet  here 
there  was  a  definition  by  treaty ;  while  there  never  had  been  any  of  these  rival 
claims  of  Spain  and  France,  which,  however,  gradually  settled  themselves  by 
opposite  occupation.  We  have  now  pending  another  question  with  Great  Bri- 
tain, almost  equally  old;  for  we  found  our  claim  and  right  to  Oregon  partly  on 
discovery  in  1786  or  '7.  In  all  these  cases,  the  adverse  Plenipotentiaries  never 
fail  to  assert,  as  perfectly  unanswerable,  every  pretension  which  their  nation  ever 
has  or  can  set  up.  On  each  other,  they  may,  or  may  not,  make  an  impression. 
From  1805  to  1819,  Messrs.  Madison,  Monroe,  and  Adams,  made  none  on  their 
their  Spanish  adversaries.  Nothing  was  won  of, Great  Britain,  as  to  the  North- 
west boundary,  by  a  long  series  of  able  Ministers.  From  the  year  1815,  all  our 
Secretaries  of  State  and  Envoys  have  done  little  to  advance  an  adjustment  of  our 
claim  on  the  Pacific.  Yet  both  nations  are  alike  pertinacious  in  the  persuasion 
of  their  rights ;  for  though,  as  I  have  said,  they  are  little  like  to  satisfy  each  other, 
the  negotiators  must  be  very  bad  ones,  indeed,  if  they  do  not  perfectly  convince 
their  respective  nations.  I  have  knowrn  attorne}7s  not  to  silence  their  adversaries 
or  persuade  a  judge,  but  I  have  never  yet  met  the  lawyer  who  did  not  convince 
his  client  of  the  perfect  justness  of  hi's  claims. 

What,  then,  need  be  said  of  it,  if  a  popular  confidence  in  our  original  claim  to 
Texas  yet  survives  its  long  and  its  deliberate  abandonment,  in  1819,  by  statesmen 
thoroughly  versed  in  the  question,  and  entitled  to  the  public  reliance?  As  En- 
voys, or  Secretaries,  Monroe  and  Adams  maintained  our  title ;  but,  after.negofia- 
tion,  Monroe,  Adams,  Calhoun,  and  Crawford,  as  responsible  agents  of  the  nation, 
gave  it  up.  Are  their  pleadings,  as  advocates,  to  be  opposed  to  their  own  final 
judgment  as  public  men?  I  maintain  that,  as  to  mere  authority,  the  decision  of 
our  negotiators  themselves,  (men  of  high  ability,  unquestionable  patriotism,  ami 
much  better  acquainted  with  the  question  than  any  of  us,)  is  entitled  to  the  high- 
est weight ;  and  that  to  oppose  to  it  a  floating  popular  opinion  of  the  day,  though 
ill-informed,  guided  by  an  ex  parte  argument  only,  and  now  sunk  into  a  mere 
tradition  of  what  was  at  first  but  vague,  would  be  utterly  unworthy  of  the  good 
sense  of  our  people,  and  still  more  unworthy  of  those  setting  up,  as  statesmen 
and  civruans,  wisely  to  guide  the  people's  judgment. 

The  public,  wise  as  it  is  when  it  chooses  to  be  so,  highly  competent  as  all 
confess  it,  to  decide,  when  it  has  once  canvassed  things  without  passion,  is 
somewhat  given  to  be  impulsive  in  its  judgments,  and  not  a  little  prone  to  loofe 


6 

>«i  the  purpose,  or  fancy  of  tho  day  as  having  always  subsisted.  Florida,  now 
long  since  obtained,  has  ceastd,  of  course,  (o  serve  an  important  object.  Yet 
•ffiftft  was  once  the  darling  aim  of  our  great  national  organ  of  acquisitiveness ', 
Jiafxui  which  the  idea  once  sat  rnthrurnd,  as  the  chief  scope  of  all  policy. 
$£ven  before  the  sudden  and  fortunate  acquisition  of  Louisiana,  we  had  began 
'to  covet  the  land  of  flowers  quite  as  warmly  and  with  nearly  as  many  visionary 
actions,  as  we  now  long  for  the  land  of  fruits.  When  we  had  once  grown 
musters  of  Louisiana,  we  proceeded,  in  1810,  to  help  ourselves  to  a«very  pretty 
slice  of  Florida,  which  we  had  expressly,  in  1805,  recognized  to  be  Spain's,  by 
•«n  oiler  to  purchase  it,  unaccompanied  with  the  smallest  assertion  of  any  title 
<on  our  part.  In  1818,  by  a  still  bolder  stroke  of  that  sort  of  diplomacy,  which 
«eluldies  what  it  wants,  when  it  can  take  it,  we  may  be  said  to  have  struck  at 
mU  jhc  rest  of  the  Peninsula.  It  was,  in  a  word,  from  1803  to  1819,  the  lead- 
ing object  of  our  territorial  cupidity.  To  bar  out,  by  its  possession,  all  foreign 
access  within  our  shores:  to  close  the  door  against  foreign  emissaries  all  edged 
•Bestir  up  to  war  the  formidable  Indian  tribes  that  lay  in  easy  communication 
w&h  it;  to  round  out  our  realm,  and  abolish  its  interruption  at  so  dangerous  a 

r'nt ;  to  exclude  smuggling,  that  transmitted  and  customary  pretence  set  up 
every  acquisition  or  encroachment,  and  now  renewed  even  by  the  very 
;fsariy  who  can  least  be  accused  of  any  violent  zeal  for  the  preservation  of  our 
vemenue  laws — these,  and  the  grasping  a  strong  maritime  position,  the  fortress 
*$®  «s  of  the  entire  West  India  trade,  and  the  sea-pass  of  all  our  great  and  rich 
jowng  empire,  about  to  spring  up  on  the  Mississippi,  were,  in  that  day,  both  to 
«BW  statesmen  and  to  the  popular  mind,  the  imperative  motives  for  making  it 
,  at  almost  any  cost.     To  Texas,  on  the  other  hand,  no  eye  of  desire  had 
been  turned.     JNone  of  the  transcendent  advantages  which  it  now  offers, 
of  the  frightful  dangers  which  now  glare  upon  us  from  every  part  of  its 
fiad  then  visioned  themselves  to  ihe  prophetic  glance  of  the  Secretary  of 
e,even  during  a  four  years  continuous  negotiation,  (our  second  on  the  sub- 
.jact,)  and  even  though,  during  three  fouiths  of  that  contest,  he  had  been  a 
^aamberof  the  cabinet  which  conducted  it.     Now,  whatever  may  be  said  of  any 
*aj2jei-  inducements  of  an  airy  sort,  such  as  the  imagination  of  a  poetic  and  fanciful 
^cliticJan  can  always  easily  call  up,  nay,  and  turn,  with  the  assistance  of  anony- 
mrnks  letters,  (of  which  the  present  occasion  has  furnished  an  abundant  crop,) 
Mk  speculations  into  certainties  the  most  positive  and  alarming — it  is  easy  to 
sea,  that  all  the  physical  and  all  the  permanent  political  benefits  that  would 
•accrue  to  us  from  reducing  Texas  to  possession,  were  the  same  as  now,  and 
jmt  as  visible  to  the   discerning  eyes  of  great  and  skillful  public  men.     The 
*f*i«stion  of  right  they  surely  much  more  thoroughly  understood,  than  we  un- 
derstand it  now  ;  for  1  need  scarcely  say,  that  it  has  long  ago  passed  out  of  the 
.pibiic  mind.     Mr.  Monroevthe  successful  negotiator  of  the  purchase  of  Loui- 
siaana,  subsequently  our  special  minister  at  Madrid  in  this  very  matter — the 
''Secretary  of  State,  who,  in  1815,  re-opened  the  conferences  with  Don  Onis,  con- 
ducted them  above  a  year,  arid  when  he  rose  to  the  Presidency,  must  be  sup- 
posed to  have  guided  with  particular  care  a  great  question  like  this,  with  which 
!*e  was  every  way  so  identified — must  surely  have  understood  our  rights,  arid 
w«s  little  likely  to  betray  them.     Had  he  been  false,  however,  two  other  South- 
em  politicians  of  the  first  magnitude  were  there  to  watch  him,  and  one  of  these, 
-at  least,  was  surely  a  man  not  to  be  hoodwinked  as  to  what  was  passing  imme- 
diately beneath  his  nose,  when  his  vast  perspicacity  stretches  across  the  ocean 
itself,  and  pierces  the  secrets  of  cabinets  3,000  miles  away. 

j*By  u.  singular  fatality,  amongst  the  leading  politicians  in  Mr.  Monroe's  cabi-   \ 
«et, "it  was  a  Northern  member,  (as  sums  now  admitted,)  who  came  last  into  the 
^mender  of  our  claim  on  Texas.    By  a  second  fatality,  not  less  singular,  and 


adding  to  its  singularity  a  shocking  injustice,  it  is  upon  this  very  opponent  ol 
the  surrender  that,  with  a  strange  transfer  of  parts  and  a  strange  anachiowbsB 
of  feelings  not  yet  awakened  in  him  towards  the  South  by  its  treatment  of  bkav 
the  blame  of  that  measure  has  been  thrown,  with  the  addition  of  the  most  igno- 
minious, and  most  manifestly  unfounded  charges  besides;  and  it  has  beeo 
attempted  so  to  be  thrown,  for  the  benefit  of  this  project,  and  of  a  leader,  wb.o 
himself,  it  Southern  interests  had  any  foul  play  in  this  matter,  must  be  held  fee* 
have  been  much  less  their  guardian — much  more  their  betrayer,  than  B&K. 
Adams. 

It  will  have  been  seen,  that  I  consider  it  perfectly  clear  that  there  was  no  be*- 
trayal  in  the  case,  and  that  in  the  past,  there  was  any  thing  but  guilt  in  what 
was  done.  It  is  plain  that,  besides  doing  all  he  could  to  secure  the  great  imdfc 
real  object  of  the  cabinet,  (the  acquisition  of  Florida,)  the  Secretary  of  Stale 
fought  to  the  last,  as  became  the  most  pertinacious  man  of  his  day,  to  obtain 
what  the  other  members  of  the  Administration  had  consented  to  yield  all  claim 
upon,  namely,  Texas.  Let  me  here  say  more  explicitly,  that  the  survey  of  all 
these  negotiations — that  of  Paris  for  Louisiana  in  1803 — that  of  Madrid  fot 
Florida  and  Texas  in  1805 — and  that  of  Washington  for  the  same  objects  is 
1815,  and  18L9,  has  left  on  my  mind  only  the  thorough  persuasion,  that  they  who 
conducted  the  business  on  our  part,  knew,  could  not  help  knowing,  how  utterly 
untenable  was  our  claim  beyond  Louisiana,  as  we  had  received  and  now  held 
it  from  the  French ;  and  that  they  employed  it  thus  perseveringly,  with  feat 
the  expectation  of  accomplishing  the  real  aim,  the  acquisition  of  Florida,  at  a, 
cheaper  rate,  by  thus  harrassing  about  another  territory,  a  power  long  in  a  prcs^ 
carious  state  at  home,  already  widely  threatened  as  to  her  possessions  on  this 
continent,  and  to  whom  we  ourselves  had  just  given  a  humiliating*  lessoe  of  the 
little  safely  with  which  she  could  hold  lands  bordering  upon  our  own.  I  know 
that  it  maybe  said,  and  especially  by  the  advocates  now  of  proceedings -the.- 
most  utterly  faithless,  that  I  am  here  attributing  to  our  negotiations  a  very  cfe 
graceful,  that  is,  a  very  immoral  conduct.  I  have  only  to  say,  that  such  things 
lie  entirely  within  the  permitted  practices  of  diplomacy  ;  which  is  everywhere, 
except  as  to  deliberate  fraud  upon  our  adversary,  or  breach  of  faith  whem 
pledged,  but  little  more  than  a  game  of  skilful  pretences.  Every  thing  heie 
warrants  the  belief  that  these  were  the  resort  in  this  instance.  They  have  ra«fc 
a  fate  which  often  attends  all  insincerity,  individual  or  national.  The  efforts 
made  to  impress  upon  Spain  our  earnestness  and  the  solidity  of  our  claim,,  had^.. 
in  the  manner  I  have  already  pointed  out,  the  hap  to  convince  our  own  peoptey 
and  thus  to  leave,  even  down  to  the  present  day,  a  strong  persuasion  that  Texa% 
of  which  France  had  never  been  in  possession,  against  which  she  had  always 
allowed  her  claim  to  slumber,  and  which  she  had,  when  applied  to  in  1805,  di- 
rectly refused  to  say  was  included  in  her  cession  to  us,  had  been  yielded  upbgr 
the  treaty  of  1819. 

Let  me  appeal  to  one  final  and  decisive  fact,  brought  to  view,  on  the  Spaitts&:- 
part,  in  the  contest.  Don  Onis  establishes  that,  in  the  year  1803,  our  Govern- 
ment, then  pressing  Spain  for  the  purchase  of  Florida,  made  to  that  country, 
through  our  Minister  at  Madrid,  the  offer  of  a  regular  guaranty  of  all  her  pos- 
sessions west  of  the  Mississippi,  if  she  would  agree  to  sell  us  what  lay  on  th«K 
-side.  This  important  instrument  may  be  found  in  vol.  4,  page  512,  of  Anoeni- 
can  State  papers,  by  Lowrie  and  Franklin.  Mr.  Charles  Pinckney,  in  his  m>t^ 
of  the  7th  February,  1803,  to  Don  Pedro  Cevalles,  says : 

"To  obtain  this,  they  have  authorized  me  to  say,  that,  should  His  Majesty  be  now  in- 
clined to  sell  to  the  United  States  his  possessions  east  of  the  Mississippi,  or  betweea  t&ar 
and  the  river  Mobile,  agreeably  to  the  propositions  enclosed,  the  United  States'" 


8 

lo  His  Majesty,  and  I  do  now  make,  in  their  name,  the  important  offer  of  guarantying  to 
Jjiffl  and  his  successors,  his  dominions  beyond  the  Mississippi." 

PROPOSITIONS  ENCLOSED. 

"1st.  The  United  States  will  purchase  the  possessions  of  His  Catholic  Majesty  on  the 
cast  side  of  the  river  Mississippi,  for  which  they  will  pay dollars. 

"2d.  They  will  purchase  these  possessions,  for  which  they  will  pay  dollars;  and, 

moreover,  guaranty  to  His  Majesty,  and  his  successors,  his  possessions  beyond  the  Mississippi. 

"3d.  They  will  purchase  the  country  between  the  rivers  Mississippi  and  Mobile,  belong- 
ing to  His  Catholic  Majesty,  and  also  places  of  deposite  near  the  mouths  of  the  other  navi- 
gable rivers  passing  from  their  territory  through  either  of  the  Floridas,  for  which  they  will 
pay dollars,  or  enter  into  other  obligations  which  may  be  thought  equivalent  to  the  ac- 
quisition. 

"4th.  If  neither  of  these  proposiiionscan  be  acceeded  to,  they  will  then  purchase  certain 
tracts  of  country  on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi,  and  the  other  rivers  passing  from  their  ter- 

riiofy  into  that  of  His  Catholic  Majesty,  for  which  they  will  pay dollars,  or  enter  into 

other  obligations,  which  may  be  thought  equivalent  lo  the  acquisition." 

I  need  hardly  point  to  the  weightiness,  in  the  present  question,  of  this  "  irnpor- 
laut  offer."  It  was  made,  be  it  remarked,  after  the  French  had  acquired  Louis- 
iana, but  before  yet  our  design  to  purchase  of  France  had  been  started.  Our 
Government  had  been  aware  of  this  cession  since  March,  1801,  but  never  knew 
lire  precise  terms,  nor  extent  of  the  transfer,  until  a  few  months  before  the  pre- 
sentation of  this  important  offer.  James  Madison,  in  his  letter  of  the  26th  July, 
1802,  to  Charles  Pinckney,  Minister  to  Spain,  says : 

^;  The  last  information  from  Paris-Tenders  it  certain  that  the  cession  of  Louisiana  to  France 
jha»  actually  been  concluded,  and  that  the  cession  comprehends  the  two  Floridas.  In  this 
state  of  the  business,  it  seems  unnecessary  to  decide  on  the  price  which  Spain  might  be  led 
to  «x'pect  for  a  cession  of  the  Floridas,  including  New  Orleans,  to  the  United  States,  and  the 
snore  so,  as  it  would  be  of  use  for  us  previously  to  know  the  value  she  places  on  the  guaranty 
proposed  in  my  letter  to  you  of  25th  of  September  last.  For  the  present,  the  cession  wished 
by  ihe  United  States  must  be  an  object  of  negotiation  with  the  French  Government.  It  will, 
notwithstanding,  continue  to  be  proper  for  you  to  cultivate  the  good  dispositions  of  Spain,  in 
relation  to  it,  both  as  they  may  not  be  entirely  disregarded  by  France,  and  as,  in  the  turn  of 
events,  Spain  may  possibly  be  extricated  from  her  engagements  with  France,  and  again  have 
ili«  disposal  of  the  territories  in  question." 

Now,  here  is  a  solemn  and  a  voluntary  pledge  to  Spain,  by  the  Jefferson  ad- 
ministration, and  through  James  Madison,  in  behalf  of  all  the  Spanish  u  domi- 
nions" and  "  possessions  "  beyond  the  Mississippi.  It  is  made  after  the  estab- 
lishment of  those  French  rights  to  which  we  presently  succeeded,  and  clearly, 
therefore,  as  an  engagement  to  unite  with  Spain  in  withstanding  any  attempt  of 
France  in  contravention  of  the  subsisting  possession  of  Texas,  or  oiher  regions 
beyond  the  Mississippi,  by  Spain.  It  is,  in  a  word,  a  direct,  and,  at  that  time, 
ao  impartial  recognition  of  the  rights  of  Spain  to  those  territories,  and  a  proffered 
covenant,  on  our  part,  not  only  that  we  will  not  disturb  her  there,  but  that  we 
will  suffer  no  other  nation  to  do  it.  I  need  hardly  add,  that,  whether  or  not  it 
was  accepted  by  the  power  to  which  it  was  made,  is  of  no  consequence,  except 
lo  the  active  duties  which  by  it  we  might  have  assumed.  Passively,  it  pronounc- 
ed the  Spanish  title  unquestionable.  It  settled,  or  should  have  settled,  forever, 
33  to  us,  the  question  of  right,  unless,  indeed,  there  should  now  be  found,  under 
ihe  new  system  of  national  ethics,  as  adapted  to  the  annexation  project,  learned 
doctors  who  are  ready  to  argue  that  the  offer  thus  soberly  made  implied  no  per- 
suasion  of  what  we 'undertook  to  affirm  ;  that  our  Government,  the  Jefferson  ad-  1 
minist ration,  in  no  manner  believed  what  it  was  willing  to  say,  but  only  engaged  ] 
lo  believe  it,  if  Spain  would  do  an  entirely  independent  thing  to  oblige  us ! 

I  have  thought  necessary,  Mr.  President,  to  enter  thus  distinctly  into  the  re-  * 
•fotation  of  these  lingering  notions  of  our  former  rights,  though  now  abandoned  \ 
not  only  by  the  irrevocable  acts  of  honorable  treaties,  but  our  quiet  possession  1 


of  Florida, 


9 


of  Florida,  then  the  great  object  of  Southern  wishes,  as  Texas  is  now  :  Florida 
yielded  to  us,  as  then  declared,  in  part  as  an  equivalent  for  the  renunciation  of 
all  future  claims  in  the  other  quarter.  To  mo-t'men's  minds,  there  is  no  argu- 
ment so  strong,  in  favor  of  a  meditated  act  of  injustice,  as  the  convincing  the 
people  that  they  themselves  have  been  originally  wronged  out  of  the  object  they 
seek.  Upon  this  natural  infirmity,  this  bad  casuistry  of  the  passions,  the  advo- 
cates of  this  wicked,  this  faithless  Treaty  under  discussion — the  advocates  of 
which  call  it  "re-annexation" — have  endeavored  to  operate.  They  have 
availed  themselves  of  the  old  and  groundless  public  notion  spread  by  the  causes 
I  have  explained.  In  aid  of  these,  they  have  appealed  to  a  personal  animosity 
existing,  in  many  quarters,  against  a  single  negotiator  of  the  treaty  of  1819. 
though  but  a  subordinate  instrument  in  the  master — though  evidently  guided 
all  the  while  by  not  only  a  superior  power,  but  by  an  older  and  more  familiar 
agent  in  the  question — though  joined  all  the  while  with  a  strong  Southern  Ca- 
binet— though  then  unaffected  with  any  resentment  towards  the  South — though 
now  well  understood  to  have  yielded  reluctantly  what  a  Southern  President,  a 
Southern  Attorney  General,  and  two  Southern  Secretaries  had  conceded.  Not 
content  with  all  this,  they  have  trumped  up,  to  finish  by  imposture  the  work  of 
awakened  prejudice  and  detraction,  a  charge  as  infamous  as  it  is  unsupported, 
of  the  suppression  by  the  Secretary  of  State  of  capital  parts  of  the  negotiation, 
and  his  treasonous  arrangement  to  avoid  obtaining  all  that  we  had  ever  pretend- 
ed to  claim.  I  need  scarcely  say  to  any  one  who  has  felt  it  his  duty,  as  I  have 
done,  to  scrutinize  these  accusations,  that  the  printed  history  of  the  negotiation,, 
to  which  I  have  more  than  once  referred,  affords  a  chain  of  testimony  that  an- 
nihilates every  trace  of  these  charges,  even  every  possibility  of  their  truth  ;  and 
that  not  only  do  the  new  documents  produced  utterly  fail  to  substantiate  what 
Mr.  Ewing  is  said  to  have  informed  General  Jackson  of,  but  even,  \vhen  a  little 
sifted,  themselves  afford  decisive  proof  against  nearly,  all  that  they  claimed  to 
establish.  Of  these  last  things,  I  need  speak  no  more  than  thus  to  characterize 
them,  especially  when  I  have  so  clearly  shown  the  legitimate  grounds  upoa 
which  the  treaty  was  concluded,  and  the  true  state  of  our  orio-inaF  rights  under 
the  cession  of  Louisiana  from  France.  It  is  clear  that  we  obtained  at  least  as 
much  as  we  had  any  tolerable  pretence  to,  and,  in  addition,  at  the  inadequate 
price  of  five  millions,  to  be  paid  to  our  own  citizens,  our  favorite  object  of  that 
day,  the  possession  of  Florida.  And  it  was  the  more  necessary  that  I  should 
endeavor  to  correct  the  erroneous  opinion  prevailing  without  on  these  matters, 
because,  even  in  this  body,  and  among  Senators  averse  to  this  wild  Treaty,  we 
have  heard  the  same  opinions  in  regard  to  our  original  title  to  Texas  as  a  part 
of  Louisiana. 

I  pass  from  this  examination  of  the  proper  and  organic  power  of  our  Govern- 
ment over  this  matter  by  treat}^  as  one  involving  every  domestic  and  constitu 
al  question,  and  from  the  consideration  of  the  main  subterfuge  by  which  is  to  be 
avoided  any  impediment  arising  out  of  the  national  compact,  iiself,  to  other  ob- 
jections as  fatal  to  the  form  as  those  already  glanced  at,  are  to  the  substance  of  this 
act.  The  instrument  before  us  is  styled  a  Treaty  ;  yet  I  cannot  but  look  on  it  as  des- 
titute of  all  the  essential  characteristics  of  a  great  act  of  that  sort,  between  nation 
and  nation.  Is  that  Irish  act,  of  union,  which  annihilated  Erin's  independent 
legislation  and  her  entire  natipriality,  a  treaty?  Or  was  it.  only  an  act.  of  JQ.~ 
corporation,  of  political  extinction?  Was  it  a  treaty  when  Russia,  by  ukase, 
bade  Poland  cease  to  be?  I  freely  admit,  the  writers  upon  national  law  re- 
cognise as  treaties  exceedingly  unequal  engagements  between  Slates,  arid  even 
such  as  reduce  one  of  them  to  the  veige  of  non-existence.  There  are,  also,  tem- 
porary, conventions,  miscalled  treaties,  which  may  be  made  with  tie  facto  tyw 
•  merits,  for  the  mere''  purpose  of  peaceful  intercourse,  to  which  a  neutral  nation 


10 

•<*may  resort,  Binder  certain  circumstances;  but  as  these  involve  no  absolute  exer- 
•eise  of  perfected  sovereignty,  they  must  take  an  inferior  rank  and  name.  A  treaty, 
in  a  word,  supposes  at  least  two  parties  ;  and  parties  to  such  a  thing  they  are  not, 
sinless  both^are  sovereign.  Here  there  is  but  one  such  party.  The  other  has 
yet.  to  make  good,  against  a  power  on  which  it  but  lately  depended,  still  claiming 
it  as  dependent,  and  with  which  we  are  bound  not  to  interfere,  its  separate  su- 
premacy, the  eminent  domain  over  its  soil  and  people.  Between  them  we  can- 
not interfere  without  a  faithless  violation  of  treaty  engagements.  For  this  I  have 
foigh  authority — no  less  than  that  of  the  Senator  from  South  Carolina,  (Mr.  Mc- 
DUFFIE.)  In  his  message  of  1836  to  the  South  Carolina  Legislature,  he  says: 

44  If  w«  admit  Texas  into  our  Union  while  Mexico  is  still  waging  war  against  that  province, 
with  a  view  to  restablish  her  supremacy  over  it,  we  shall,  by  the  very  act  itself,  make  our- 
selves a  party  to  the  war.  Nor  can  we  take  this  step  without  incurring  this  heavy  responsi- 
feiEty,  until  Mexico  herself  shall  recognise  the  independence  of  her  revolted  province." 

Were  both  the  parties,  however,  really  sovereign,  so  as  to  be  capable  of  the 
'highest  acts  of  nationality,  (such  as  give  no  rights  against  them,  to  others,)  there 
Tire  acis  which,  as  between  them,  would  not  be  treaties,  because  they  put  an  end 
£o  the  seperate  existance  of  the  one  or  the  other.  For  a  treaty  must  leave,  as 
well  as  find,  two  parties,  in  order  that  the  obligation  itself  may  continue.  Under 
the  ideas  of  monarchical  systems,  which  suppose  that  a  people  may  be  held  in 
fee  simple,  the  sovereign  may,  by  renunciation,  or  alienation,  extinguish  the 
•sovereignty  ;  not  so,  however,  under  Republican  principles.  By  these,  a  State, 
•once  free,  cannot  divest  itself  of  its  freedom,  cannot  extinguish  its  individuality 
•as  a  people,  and  the  act  would  be  void,  precisely  for  the  same  reason  for  which 
w«  hold  that  a  freeman  cannot,  by  contract,  part  with  his  liberty.  Were  Texas, 
therefore,  a  State,  sovereign  and  free,  she  could  not  by  treaty  reduce  herself  into 
<®ar  dependancy  and  territory,  though  I  admit  that  she  might  unite  with  us  by 
another  process. 

•I  have  already  shown,  at  the  outset,  in  examining  the  powers  of  this  Govern- 
•fpent  over  a  matter  like  this,  that  it  has  no  power  and  could  have  no  faculty  to 
incorporate  with  ours,  of  its  own  action,  another  people,  or  an  external  territory, 
ft  is  equally  clear  that,  could  the  sovereignty  of  Texas  be  extinguished,  this 
crculd  only  be  done  by  the  immediate  act  of  her  people  itself,  not  of  her  public 
foticUonaries  constituted  for  another  purpose.  Nor  would  some  former  assent 
*<*f  her  colleciive  citizens,  some  vote  of  six  or  eight  years  since,  such  as  is  now 
•.put  in  to  stand  for  her  will,  be  valid  for  the  purpose,  still  less  can  it  be  yalid, 
when  the  assent,  then  obtained,  was  to  a  thing  totally  different.  The  vote  then 
fca'ken  was  for  her  union  to  this  confederacy  as  an  equal  member,  not  a  depend- 
ent territory  ;  for,  as  all  know,  this  last  evasion  of  the  Constitution,  this  indi- 
fection,  had  not  then  been  thought  of  as  within  the  reach  of  the  treaty  making 
power.  Thai  blessed  and  bright  invention  of  the  strict  const ructionists  had  not 
yet  sprung,  Pall  us  like,  from  the  brain  of  any  Southern  Jove. 

A  Ij-eaty  then  supposes  not  only  two  parties,  but  parties  competent  to  what  is 
1  to  he  accomplished  by  it.  If  the  object  is  a  cession  of  any  kind,  the  one  party 
miisl  be  qualified  to  grant,  and  the  other  to  receive  that  object ;  but  since  both 
these  conditions  are  wanting  here,  this  is  no  treaty.  Had  we  ourselves  been 
competent  to  such  a  transaction,  beyond  doubt  a  party,  namely,  Mexico,  might 
tzave'beei)  found,  with  whom  we  could  enter  into  it.  To  search  so  far  was 
•manifestly  unnecessary,  however ;  since  when  no  right  can  be  taken,  it  is  of 
exceedingly  little  consequence  whether  any  can  be  given  or  not.  But  since 
in  trea  ins  is  greatly  to  be  desiied,  it  was  clearly  best,  that  a  party  inca- 
e  of  receiving  should  have  to  deal  with  one  equally  incapable  of  giving. 
iiig  the  consummate  prudrnne  as  well  as.  wisdom,  of"  tho  Administration,  I 
no  doubt  that  it  gave,  in  its  long  and  profound  deliberations  over  this 


matter,  ffrei 


11 


ter,  great  weight  to  this  last  consideration.  Not  equality  only  is  to  be 
in  treaties,  but  simplicity  ;  ami  certainly  the  course  taken  greatly  simplifie( 
business.  For  between  our  own  incompetency  to  the  thing  and  that  of  ®t?£ 
well  chosen  counter  party,  there  is  a  wonderful  conformity.  If  Texas  be  sove- 
reign, the  doctrine  of  some  politicians  is,  that  this  Government  is  not — has-  bill 
a  quasi  sovereignty.  Here,  then  are  very  pretty  facilities  to  ihis  State  Ilia  tits- 
operation  of  clinching  a  State's  sovereign  rights  to  that  which  has  none.  What 
becomes  of  the  vanished  supremacy?  Does  it  flit  to  the  moon,  where  the  fast 
wits  of  heroes,  the  over  volatile  virtue  of  dames,  and  whatever  else  is  missmg 
from  earth,  (poets  say)  is  treasured  np?  Or  does  it  lie  dormant,  like  u  bear  m 
his  winter  sleep,  sucking  his  paws?  Or  is  it  bottled  u  p  for  an  other  general  10% 
like  South-side  London  Particular  Madeira,  to  grow  only  the  finer  the  longer  it- 
is  kept  under  cork?  But  according  to  the  same  creed  of  State  sovereignty,, 
what  are  we  buying,  under  this  so  called  treaty?  Are  we  purchasing  of  ao, 
independent  State,  what  onr  Declaration  of  Indeperidancc  declares  to  be  in.de* 
feasibly  in  aarery  people,  the  rights  of  their  self-government  ?  We  surely  are- 
not  deriving  a  bargain  for  the  public  do  Main  of  Texas,  well  understood  to  b® 
entirely  alienated,  perhaps  twice  over.  Here  I  will  take  occasion  to  stale  an  irai^ 
portant  fact,  without  stopping  to  characterize  it  ;;s  evincing  a  purpose  to  produce 
a  false  impression.  I  am  utterly  opposed,  however,  to  the  people  of  the  Unite*!. 
States  being  deceived  by  it.  The  tact  to  which  I  allude  is  this  ;  the  negotintocs 
of  the  Texas  treaty  on  the  part  of  Texas,  Messrs.  Van  Zandt  and  Henderson^ 
in  their  note  to  John  C.  Calhoun,  Secretary  of  State,  of  the  15th  of  Aprit,  1844,, 
in  reply  to  certain  inquiries  of  Mr.  Calhoun,  say  : 

"Upon  the  subject  of  the  public  lands,  the  undersigned  submit  a  summary  statement,, 
made  from  a  lale  report  of  the  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office,  to  the  President  o£ 
Texas. 

acres. 

He  estimates  the  aggregate  at     -  -  .  -  -  203,520,000 

Lands  appropriated  67,408,67$ 

Remainder  unappropriated      -  -  -  -  -  136 1 1 1 ,327."" 

To  this  "late  report"  no  date  is  given,  although  it  was  communicated  toita-e 
Senate  with  the  treaty,  as  evidence  of  the  quantity  of  laud  we  were  to  get,  o»t 
of  which  to  pay  the  debts  of  Texas  assumed  by  us.  Now,  sir,  what  will  you 
think  of  this  statement,  when  informed  of  the  fact,  that  this  '•'•late  report"  was 
made  in  1841,  since  which  time  we  have  no  account  of  lands  sold  or  graftfetl 
by  Texas?  The  date  uf  the  report  appeais  by  the  memoir  accompanying  tf*® 
map  of  Texas,  sent  here  by  the  President  of  the  United  Siates. 

What,  then,  are  we  to  get  for  the  assumption  in  blank  of  all  the  public  defeta 
of  Texas?  For,  as  to  the  attempted  specificaiion  in  the  treaty,  delusively  putt 
there  as  if  they  who  drew  it  meant  to  limit  or  could  limit  our  I  abili.ies,  nothing 
can  be  more  falacious.  With  or  without  thai  specification,  it  is  precisely  the- 
same  thing :  we  are  none  the  less  liable  for  her  previous  coirracts.  acknow- 
ledged or  repudiated.  She  becomes  our  femme  covcrte  and  though  we  may 
make  with  her  before  the  bridal,  or  even  at  the  alter,  an  understanding  that  \ve 
are  to  discharge  only  a  certain  part  of  her  debts,  (pay  her  milliner  only,  for  io-  \ 
stance,  and  let  her  grocer,  or  heir  butcher  go  whistle  for  his  money,)  these 
honest  tradesmen  may  be  upon  us  with  a  capias  next  morning,  before  yet  its 
blush  has  met  the. has! ifu I  bride's,  or  we  have  given  her  timid  charms  the  first 
salutation  of  the  day.  What  then,  can  we  be  pretended  to  be  buying,  or  other- 
wise getting,  but  her  sovereignty?  And  now,  according  to  the  very  principle 
in  chief  of  those  who  are  urging1  us  to  the  acquisition,  what  is  this  worth,  a*  a 
vendible  commodity  ?  Many  of  these  very  people  say,  that  we  can  l»k< 
is;n  right  over  her,  except  just  so  long  as  sho  pleases.  A  part  of  t 


12 

3iold  a  Dorrite  self-emancipation  to  be  always  legitimate  ;  another  part  hold  that 
secession  is  never  to  be  denied  ;  and  another  portion  claim  peaceful  nullification 
as  "  the  rightful  remedy,"  to  which  a  State  may  always  resort  when  she  lists. 
What  should  hinder  Texas,  as  soon  as  we  have  paid  her  debts,  from  "calcula- 
ting the  value  of  the  Union  ?"  If.  now  so  accessable  to  the  offers  of  England, 
as  the  friends  of  this  treaty  pretend,  may  she  not  be  quite  as  much  so  then, 
when  suffering  (as  the  Hon.  Senator  from  South  Carolina  assures  us  that  every 
body  in  the  South  suffers)  under  "  a  worse  than  colonial  vassalage,"  "  the  in- 
tolerable oppression  of  the  tariff?"  Methinks  there  are  some  folks  wonderfully 
fond  of  "enormous  burdens,"  and  some  who  are  strangely  disposed  to  entice 
others  into  wretchedness,  no  doubt  upon  the  old  principle,  "  that  misery  loves 
company."  But  can  we  be  at  all  sure  that  this  singular  Southern  application 
of  that  renowned,  democratic  rule,  called  the  "greatest  happiness  principle," 
will  continue?  Afier  having  drawn  the  Texans  into  a  share  in  the  inestimable 
advantages  of  being  one  of  us,  are  they  not  very  likely,  as  soon  as  they  shall  be 
of  the  household,  to  (ell  them  some  rather  awful  family  secrets,  as^for  instance, 
under  what  "  a  grinding  tyranny"  we  live,  and  how  much  better  off  they,  the 
poor  folks  of  the  lone  star  would  be  under  the  English  dominion,  dependant 
on  their  CJ  natural  market." 

It  must  be  confessed  that  some  Southern  gentleman  are  a  good  deal  given,  in 
the  snug  little  circle  here,  and  in  that  of  the  other  House,  or  in  fireside  parties 
of  a  few  thousands  at  home,  to  talking  just  in  this  way.  We  ourselves  are 
quite  used  to  all  this  sort  of  thing.  We  know  the  patriotism  and  loyalty  of  their 
true  sentiments,  and  that  all  this  is  but  a  joke.  But  when  the  Texas  folks, 
already  with  so  many  alarming  affinities  to  England,  come  here,  will  not  they  who 
know  no  better,  take  all  this  for  earnest,  and  think  this  a  very  bad  business  that 
they  have  got  into,  and  this  coveted  blessing  of  annexation  rather  a  sorry  boon  9 
It  strikes  me  so,  Mr.  President,  and  that  the  probabilities  of  their  long  retaining 
any  very  violent  attachment  to  this  Union,  beyond  the  lapse  of  the  mere  politi- 
cal honey-moon,  are  by  no  means  strong,  especially  under  the  indoctrination  of 
the  teachers  to  whom  I  have  just  referred.  It  cannot  be  said  that  it  was  a  love 
of  freedom  that  drove  them  from  home;  for  that  they  had  already,  so  that,  as 
to  it,  they  could  gain  nothing,  and  might  loose  everything.  A  part  of  them 
notoriously  left  us  to  become  the  denizens  of  a  foieign  land,  strange  to  their 
tongue,  alien  to  their  religion,  and  that  of  their  fathers,  utterly  uncertain  in  alt 
its  public  destinies,  and  offering  nothing  to  bind  to  it  the  affections  of  one  bred 
in  our  insiitutions,  except  the  hope  of  overturning  the  very  government  to 
which  they  pledged  themselves,  when  they  sought  its  protection,  and  received 
its  bounty.  The  only  serious  allegation  of  the^  Texans  was,  that  Mexico  had 
exchanged  her  Federative  organization  for  a  centralized  one,  which  was  disa- 
greeable to  Texas,  or  rather  feigned  to  be  so ;  for  I  think  it  clear  that,  had  the 
fact  been  reversed,  Texas  would  have  picked  the  same  quarrel,  alledging  other 
and  opposite  reasons.  Not  freedom,  then  was  their  aim,  not  theoretical  rights  ; 
not  liberty  of  conscience,  for  which  they  had  never  siipulated,  and  in  which 
they  had  all  they  could  expect,  toleration  for  the  very  small  degree  of  religion 
about  which  they  had  ever  troubled  themselves.  The  real  object,  as  all  know 
who  watched  the  purposes  of  this  movement,  was  a  totally  different  one. 
Mexico  had  given  them  liberally  large  gifts  of  fertile  lands,  highly  fit  for  the 
richest  productions  of  slave  labor  ;  but  c*s  the  laws  of  Mexico  did  not  permit 
slavery,  those  lands  were  comparitively  valueless.  The  insurrection,  then, 
putting  out  of  view  the  personal  ambition  of  those  who  were  in  hope  its  lead- 
ers had  but  two  real  aims,  and  both  these  land  jobbing  one?,  to  throw  off  the 
Mexican  laws,  in  order  that  slave  property  might  be  introduced;  and  with  a 
wide  market  for  sugar  and  cotton  lands  thus  obtained,  to  seize  upon  a  great 


13 

public  domain,  and  parcel  it  out  among  ihe  small  American  population,  so  as 
to  enrich  every  man  of  them,  and  give  their  leaders  even  princely  possessions. 
It  is  futile  to  talk  of  Texan  liberty  as  having  any  cause,  any  impulse  but  this,,, 
whaiever  show  of  patriotism,  and  devotion  to  the  cause  of  self-government  may 
have  been  made.  It  is  equally  futile  to  pretend  that,  whatever  dishonest  en- 
couragement to  the  design,  the  troubles,  or  the  weakness  or  wickedness  of 
Mexico  afforded,  the  attempt  itself  could  ever  have  been  thought  of  by  a  body 
of  population  not  now  200,000,  and  then  far  less,  against  an  empire  of  fully 
eight  millions,  unless  under  a  thorough  persuasion,  justified  by  every  part  of 
the  event,  that  our  people,  breaking  loose  as  individuals  from  every  just  obliga- 
tion as  a  nation,  would  pour  down  to  the  war,  afford  arms,  supplies,"every  thing, 
and  in  reality,  as  it  has  proved,  do  most  of  the  paying,  and  all  the  fighting. 
Such  was  the  fact.  In  the  first  glare  of  that  enthusiasm  which  among  us  awakes 
so  easily  to  any  cause  that  will  take  the  style  of  "freedom,"  "Constitution," 
"self  government,"  our  hardy,  brave,  confiding,  and  generous  men  of  the  West 
made  a  wide  rush  to  the  war,  under  the  cry,  believed  by  them,  of  liberty. 
Among  this  number,  Mr.  President,  I  had  myself  many  friends,  and  relatives, 
whose  devotion  to  freedom,  noble  nature,  and  daring  spirit  induced  them  in  a 
cause  supposed  honorable,  to  hazard  every  thing ;  and  but  too  many  of  them 
fertilized  the  battle-fields  of  Texas  with  their  life  blood.  By  such.  Mexico  was 
beaten,  and  borne  back,  Texas  seemed  won,  and  its  independence,  for  the  time, 
achieved. 

So  plain  and  manifest  had  been,  in  that  contest,  our  dereliction  of  national 
duty  as  a  neutral,  that  after  the  seeming  completion  of  its  success,  our  Govern- 
ment, though  invited  by  Texas,  did  not  venture  to  profit  by  it,  dreading  too 
much  the  imputed  infamy  over  the  civilized  world,  of  so  foul  a  transaction. 
Such  was  the  ground  taken  by  the  Senator  from  Pennsylvania,  (Mr.  Bu- 
CHANjVAN,)  when  he  voted  against  recognizing  even  the  independence  of  Texas 
in  1837.  So  the  new  Republic  of  the  moment  was  left  to  confirm,  if  it  could, 
by  those  things  which,  even  much  more  than  valour  in  the  field  make  or  mar 
a  nation,  all  that  arms  appeared  to  have  won. 

From  almost  that  moment,  the  cause  and  the  hopes  of  Texas  have  gone 
backwards.  Her  councils  have  failed  to  shape  out  for  her  anything  secure; 
noihing  respectable  abroad,  nothing  worthy  at  home,  has  attended  her  efforts  to 
prepare  for  the  contest  never  relinquished  on  the  part  of  Mexic0,  and  certain  to 
be  pushed  again  as  soon  as  that  power  was  disembarrassed  of  still  closer  conflicts 
with  France,  and  afterwards  with  Yucat?n.  Gradually,  a  complete  inefficiency 
of  every  thing  belonging  to  a  government,  a  destitution  of  all  resources,  a  ruin 
of  all  the  public  character  which  might  have  supplied  their  place,  a  general  loss 
of  all  confidence  or  sympathy,  and  finally  the  visible  signs  of  a  total  incapacity 
to  be  a  nation,  of  an  established  imbicility  and  anarchy,  have  gathered  over  her 
fortunes.  This  is  in  effect  avowed  by  the  very  authors  and  defenders  of  the 
treaty.  In  the  midst  of  her  enemies  general  inactivity,  she  has  contrived  to 
exhaust  all  her  means  of  defence;  and,  therefore,  it  is  said  needs  our  protection. 
She  has  no  army  ;  her  navy  has  been  sold  at  auction.  She  is  without  revenue 
for  even  her  ordinary  expenditures,  and  her  credit  is  utterly  gone.  In  this  state 
of  collapse  urged  as  one  of  the  grounds  for  this  treaty,  with  every  symptom  of 
political  dissolution  upon  her,  the  rattles  in  her  throat,  and  the  last  ligidily  set- 
tling over  her  members,  after  she  has  been  plied  with  divers  stimulants  of  invi- 
tation, of  threats  and  wheedling,  fomented  with  certain  warm  flannels  in  the 
shape  of  perhaps  more  than  one  sort  of  treaty,  the  cordial  of  an  army  poured 
down  her  throat,  and  the  smelling  bottle  of  a  fleet  clapped  to  her  nose,  a  Presi- 
dential nurse,  and  a  diplomatic  doctor  come  to  us,  and  tell  us,  that  she  is  at 
death's  door — that  she  has  n<f,  even  hud  a  finger  ache — that,  however,  she  is  very 


14 

poorly — that,  again,  she  is  in  singulaily  fine  health  and  spirits — but  that  she  is 
Very  bad,  and  ihe  undertaker  may  be  sent  for — lhat  it  is  nothing  but  the  me- 
grims, produced  by  certain  confabulations  with  one  Mr.  Andrews,  who  has  put 
tier  in  great  bodily  fear,  by  offering  to  buy  all  her  negroes,  if  some  body  will 
lend  him  the  money,  and  of  whom  her  apprehensions  have  become,  very  natu- 
rally, almost  un  control  able  upon  his  being  compelled,  for  fear  of  lynching,  to  run 
away  !  All  this,  certified  by  any  quantity  of  anonymous  letters,  they  still  tell 
us,  insisting  that  Texas  is  perfectly  independent,  but  on  the  immediate  verge  of 
falling  a  prey  to  the  first  coiner;  that  she  is  entirely  at  peace  with  every  body, 
ttnd  especially  with  Mexico,  but  yet  is  in  the  most  imminent  petil  of  being  over- 
whelmed, no  body  can  say  precisely  how,  or  by  whom  ;  lhat  there  has  been  no 
war  between  her  and  Mexico  for  full  eight  years,  though,  to  be  sure,  we  did  last 
year  mediate  for  an  armistice  between  them,  and  though  the  President's  last 
'annual  message,  drawn  up  since  this  treaty  was  set  on  foot,  declared  that  there 
'was  war  between  them,  and  that  war  carried  on  with  a  shocking  inhumanity, 
•"Such  are  the  apologies  and  pretences  for  this  precipitate  treaty,  made  without 
authority,  and  without  consulting  the  American  people.  Let  me  return,  how- 
ever, from  my  history  to  my  argument,  and  show  a  lite  further,  that,  for  still 
Bother  reasons,  this  thing  before  us  is  in  no  sort  a  treaty.  A  treaty  supposes,  if 
'not  faith  towards  the  party  with  whom  you  are  dealing,  at  least  faith  towards 
yourselves.  Here  there  is  none  on  either  side.  The  treaty  will  in  no  sort  effect 
what  it  expresses.  It  in  no  manner  expresses  what  it  will  effect ;  and  this  was 
perfectly  well  understood  between  those  who  drew  it;  so  that  it  is  a  fraud  upon* 
us,  by  Texas,  to  which  this  Administration  are  parties. 

A  treaty  is  surely  not  such  which  conveys  not  its  expressed  object,  but  one 
directly  opposite.  Here  we  stipulate  for  a  sovereignty,  and  a  territory:  we  get! 
only  a  war.  We  bargain  for  possession,  and  we  have  to  fight  for  it,  and  that 
under  dishonor  for  the  violation  of  treaties.  If  it  be  a  purchase,  it  is  of  that 
which  cannot  be  delivered,  on  one  side,  and  cannot  be  taken  on  the  other  by 
treaty.  If  it  is  a  conveyance,  it  is,  as  to  the  sovereignty  of  what  cannot  be 
alineated,  and,  as  to  the  territory,  partly  of  what  is  in  disputed  possession,  and 
partly  of  what  never  was  in  possession  of  Texas,  but  adversely  held  and  occu- 
pied by  Mexico.  For  the  professed  objects,  which  we  are  thus  not  to  get,  we 
are  to  give  in  money,  a  consideration  much  larger  than  appears,  and  all  our  na- 
tional honer  besides.  To  lighten  it,  pretended  assets,  long  ago  dissipated,  are 
set  for.h;  but,  as  1  have  said,  nothing  is  delivered  to  us  but  a  quarrel  upon  dis- 
liohorable  terms.  We  get  no  title  but  to  a  war.  If  this  was  what  we  wanted, 
why  the  formality  of  a  treaty,  and  the  expense  of  a  purchase  ?  Surely  we  could 
f)ave  got  a  fight  somewhere  for  nothing.  Why  then  pay  down  in  advance  some 
fifteen  or  twenty  millions  for  one?  Why  not  settle  the  Oregon  question  in  thaS 
way,  where  we  have  a  right  disputed,  and  an  adversary  worthy  our  prowess? 

Again,  a  treaty  is  something  made  by  a  treaty  making  power;  but  the  actsr 
Vhich,  as  treaties,  it  has  no  right  to  do,  are,  when  done,  no  treaties  at  all.  The 
President  and  Senate  have  no  right  to  make  war;  they  cannot,  therefore,  right- 
fully enter  into  a  treaty,  the  direct  effect  of  which  is  war,  and  gives  to  another 
nation  a  right  of  war  against  us,  or  assumes  a  war  pending.  They  surely  cannot 
do  lhat,  which  is  an  aggression  upon  another  nation,  as  well  as  an  usurpation 
'Upon  our  own  Constitution.  It  is  manifest  that,  pending  a  war  between  Texas 
and  Mexico,  a  so  called  treaty,  by  which  the  former  alienated  to  us  all  her  pos- 
sessions, and  her  sovereignty,  (the  entire  subject  of  the  war.)  would  of  course  be 
nothing  but  a  direct  assumption  of  the  war,  a  substitution  of  ourselves  forTexa*. 
True,  we  may  have  stipulated  for  possession  only  ;  but  while  that  possession  is  a 
matter  of  war,  and  can  only  arise  out  of  the  fortunate  issue  of  that  war — war, 
though  not  stipulated,  is  the  direct  and  principal  effect,  and  possession  unly  con- 


15 

tingent  and  subsidiary.  Texas  cannot  deliver  us  possession,  but  only  the  war 
•upon  the  event,,of  which  that  possession  depends;  so  that  the  misnamed  treaty 
of  annexation  or  incorporation  is  not  such,  but  war  under  another  name,  faith- 
lessly and  unconstitutionally  made,  [t  is  manifest  that  such  would  be  the  object 
on  the  part  of  Texas,  and  such  alone  the  expectation  on  our  part. 

If  Texas  be  not  already  in  the  condition  I  have  described ;  if  she  be  not  ort 
the  very  eve  of  political  extinction  ;  if  possessed  of  an  independance  in  any  sort 
teal  enough,  (and  high  and  clear  it  should  be,  that  our  honor  may  be  free  of  all 
suspicion,)  to  justify  this  step  on  our  part,  why  should  she  thus  yield  up  her. 
seperate,  her  individual  being,  as  a  people,  and  become  not  a  State,  but  a  depend- 
ant territory  ?  Nations  never  do  this  voluntarily.  They  recoil  as  instinctively 
from  such  foifeiture  of  their  own  identity,  as  the  soul  of  each  man  in  them 
shrinks  from  the  thought  of  annihilation,  preferring,  almost,  deliberately  to  en- 
counter any  chances  of  eternal  pain,  rather  than  to  perish,  to  be  swallowed  up 
and  lost  in  nothingness.  Nothing  is  stronger  than  this  principle  or  feeling,  im- 
planted by  nature  herself  in  the  hearts  of  every  people  as  soon  as  formed.  In.  a 
nation,  it  is  the  very  life,  (he  vital  fire  that  must  have  warmed  it  up  into  thought 
and  motion,  and  made  it  a  political  existence.  If  Texas  never  had  this,  she  never 
has  been  a  nation  free  and  independent.  She  has  been  but  a  poor  automaton, 
dressed  up,  perhaps  imposingly  enough,  in  the  semblance  of  one,  and  like  that 
haughty  Turk,  whom  most  of  us  have  seen  playing  an  exceedingly  good  game 
of  chess,  apparently  hard  to  beat,  but  really  an  empty  image  all  the  while,  moved 
by  unseen  springs,  guided  by  some  operator  not  far  off,  who  &oks  on  with  a  most 
disinterested  aspect,  and  has  not  the  slightest  apparent  connexion  with  the  game. 
If  Texas  was  free,  independent,  the  mistress  of  not  only  her,  own  soil,  but  of 
Mexican  regions  in  addition,  which  no  man  of  hers  had  ever  trod  except  ia 
anklets  of  iron  ;  if  she  laughs  at  Spanish  arms,  and  has  no  greater  danger  to  fear, 
in  any  other  quarter,  than  Mr.  Andrews,  and  his  shadowy  bands;  if  especially, 
she  be  so  strong  that  it  was  necessary  for  us  to  turn  suppliants  and  intriguers  for 
a  connexion  with  her ;  if,  I  say,  she  be  all  this,  why  seek  to  lay  down  her  national 
existence,  like  a  heavy  burden  to  be  borne  no  longer?  Why  foifeit  her  untiam- 
melled  liberty,  her  proud  self-reliance,  her  guardianship  of  her  own  interests, 
surely  now  quite  hostile  to  our  own,  according  to  the  very  gentlemen  who  here 
urge  this  union?  With  what,  at  worst,  is  she  threatened?"  On  the  one  side,  I 
see  nothing  more  awful  than  Mr.  Andrews,  and  on  the  other  nothing  more  for* 
midable  than  a  free  trade  treaty  with  England.  Are  these  the  things  that  unman 
the  Southern  chivalry,  and  make  the  heroes  of  San  Jacinto  quake?  Why,  as  (a 
abolition,  any  alarm  which  Texas  feels,  must  surely  be  at  the  prospective  failure 
of  profits,  rather  than  the  danger  of  the  loss  of  any  thing  she  now  has;  for  it 
seems  that  there  are,  in  all,  hut  25,000  slaves  in  Texas,  or  about  one  eighth  of 
the  entire  population  she  claims.  Now,  where  but  one  man  in  seven  owns  a 
slave,  the  popular  dread  of  abolition,  extending  only  to  one  seventh  of  the  whites, 
cannot  be  very  engrossing.  Besides,  I  can  see  no  evidences  of  any  such  terror* 
In  spite  of  all  the  contagious  alarms,  bred  in  our  Slate  Depaitment,  her  people 
are  calm,  her  statesmen  self- possessed.  Her  very  diplomatists  have  failed  to  take 
the  hint,  to  comprehend  the  nods  and  winks  of  our  cabinet,  to  copy  its  simulated 
trepidation,  to  echo  the  dolorous  language  of  its  apprehensions.  In  short,  they 
never  advert  to  it  at  all ;  and  even  our  complaisant  minister,  Mr.  Murphy,  thougb- 
of  a  soul  in  which  all  sons  of  tornados  of  the  feelings  are  easily  produced,  has, 
on  this  mailer,  so  far  bridled  "the  whirlwind  of  hi«  emotions,"  as  not  to  attribute 
to  Texas  the  slightest  share  in  tliis  dread.  Yet  ii  is  ihere  that  these  dire  plans 
are  hatching,  and  over  her  that.  the*e  dangers  impend  ;  dangers  which  she  either 
does  net  see,  or  does  not  fear;  visible  and  frightful  only  to  those  who  are  two 
thousand  miles  off! 


16 

The  trulh  is,  this  whole  business  is  a  fraud,  a  plan,  wiih  which  John  Tyler 
intends,  if  he  can,  to  bamboozle  (he  American  people  in  the  approaching  Presi- 
dential election.  Sir,  names  lower  than  befit  things  often  presented  in  this  body, 
contemptuous  terms  rarely  ever  applicable  to  matters  of  such  £rave  consequence, 
can  alone  convey  in  their  truth  these  miserable  pretences.  They  are  hardly  de- 
scribable  but  as  trumpery  and  humbug.  The  dialect,  not  of  affairs  of  Slate,  but 
of  ihe  gaming  table  or  race  course, can  alone  body  them  forth  in  their  turpitude, 
their  nefariousness.  The  conspirators  who  conceived  them  could  not  well  have 
talked  of  them,  but  as  the  adepts  in  Hoyle  and  the  si ud  book  speak  of  the  plans 
by  which  pocket  books  are  to  be  emptied,  or  purses  taken.  The  metaphors  and 
the  vocabulary  of  such  people  could  alone  illustrate  or  elucidate  the  purposes  to 
foe  accomplished,  or  the  means  to  be  employed.  Without  even  the  assistance  of 
what  we  hear,  we  know  how  the  chief  player  of  this  despicable  game  must  have 
told  his  confederates  of  his  expectations.  Their  common  organ, the  sporting 
calender  here  of  this  fraternity,  has  talked  of  the  thing  all  the  while  much  in  that 
jockey  phrase  which  was  appropriate  to  it.  From  it  we  could  collect  the  culling, 
the  shuffling,  the  stocking  of  the  pack  that  was  going  on.  Through  it,  we  hav.e 
learnt  how  the  President  held  back  this  card  of  annexation  as  an  ace  of  (rumps, 
that  was,  in  the  nick  of  the  play,  to  give  him  the  game,  and  sweep  the  board. 
At  times,  however,  (as  the  figures  of  speech  of  the  Government  paper  are  often 
Hot  a  little  mixed,  and  glide  into  the  loftier  style  of  the  camp  and  the  field  of 
glory,)  this  trump  c^rd  became  a  bomb  that  was  suddenly  (o  fall  from  the  skies 
among  the  forces  or  one  adversary,  or  a  mine  (hat  was  to  blow  the  assailing  legions 
of  another  into  the  sky.  Now,  it  was  to  come  down  upon  Mr.  Van  Bnren's 
head,  and. now,  to  burst  beneath  Mr.  Clay's  feet,  knocking  one  into  the  earth, 
and  ihe  other  into  the  air.  Presently,  again,  relapsing  into  more  pacific  phrase, 
the  bomb  or  (he  mine  became  a  high  mettled  steed,  bestriding  which  the  Presi- 
dent was  to  distance  in  the  race  of  popularity  all  such  mere  lackeys  as  were  rode 
by  others.  There  stood,  booted  and  spurred,  in  blue  jacket,  red  cap,  and  yellow 
breeches,  the  Executive,  John  Jones  holding  his  bottle,  attendan:  Secretaries  his 
whip  and  stirrup,  the  Postmaster  General  his  bridle;  while  the  trainer  in-chief 
(he  of  the  State  Department,)  stood  prepared  (o  lift  him  inio  the- saddle.  Mean- 
time, as  the  Baltimore  Convention  drew  nigh,  abandoning  their  own  used  up 
cavalry,  about  him  came  the  veteran  Indian  slayer  of  the  West,  his  military  rival 
of  (he  Lakes,  and  others  of  high  pretensions.  All  looked  wiih  longing  eyes  at 
his  saddle.  All  would  have  gladly  leapt  info  it,  but  for  John  Jones  and  the 
stable  boys>  who  loudly  announced  that  jusiice  demanded  that  the  owner  alone 
of  this  purse-taker  should  straddle  him;  when  lo  !  the  convention  appears  wiih 
a  candidate  of  their  own.  They  thrust  by  trainer  and  all,  scat  Polk  in  the  saddle, 
slap  the  horse  on  the  rump  to  start  him,  and  bid  him  go  !  And  while  he  hob- 
bles off,  the  dismounted  Executive  stands  aghast.  The  Secretaries  are  thunder 
struck;  while  John  and  the  stable  boys  protest,  in  vain,  that  it  is  the  President's 
horse,  that  (here  is  cheating  going  on,  that  this  is  too  bad. 

But  (o  return  to  the  other  great  cause  of  fright,  which  has  so  alarmed  the  Sena- 
tor from  Pennsylvania,  (Mr.  BUCHANAN,)  a?  to  make  him  overleap  his  opinions 
as  expressed  in  1837,  a  treaty  with  England  that  shrill  give  her  all  the  trade  of 
Texas.  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  why  the  possibility  of  this  should  produce  any 
panic.  As  in  the  other  case,  I  see  no  manifestations  of  the  presence  of  such  a 
peril  to  (he  minds  of  those  whom  it  ought  chiefly  to  affect.  Still  less  can  I 
imagine  why  those  should  impute  it  to  them,  or  should  endeavor  to  fling  them 
into  a  iremor  about  it,  who  themselves  meditate  or  desire  just  about  the  same 
arrangements  with  Britain,  as  the  aim  of  all  rational  policy,  the  requisition  uf 
all  constitutional  right. 

Texas  has  no  manufactures,  no  mechanic  arts,  no  moneyed  capital  to  set  (hem 


17 

on  foot,  no  skill  formed  to  them,  no  body  of  working  population  dependant  on 
them  for  employment.     She  is,  even  for  beyond  any  of  our  Southern  States,  a 
producer  of  raw  material  alone.     If,  then,  to  a  people  like  us,  of  most  mixed 
occupations,  of  climates  and  soils  compelling  them,  where  the  intimate  division 
abor  is  already  in  existence,  where  the  povyer  of  supplying  ourselves  with 
almost  everything  has  grown  up,  vicing,  in  short,  with  Europe  in°no  small  part  of 
le  useful  arts,  and  possessing  a  vast  and  rapidly  swelling  internal  trade,  in  com- 
parison with  which  our  foreign  shrinks  into  insignificance:  if,  I  say,  to  a  people 
'toiled,  free  trade  with  Britain  be  so  great  a  good,  what  is  there  in  it  which 
should  so  horribly  frighten  Texas?     If,  nevertheless,  it  is  her  pleasure,  and  that 
her  free  trade  friends,  to  be  so  excessively  discomposed,  I  think  only  a  few- 
plain  considerations  are  needed  to  set  them  at  their  ease.     England,  it  well  ap- 
pears, is  not  willing  to  contiact  towards  Texas  any  responsibilities,  either  politi- 
cal or  pecuniary.     Of  that  the  documents  presented  to  us  to  prove  these  designs 
fford  proof  enough;  and  though  these  papers  are  far  from  being  such  as  are°fit 
'  be  relied  on  for  the  affirmative  question,  where  they  sustain  the  negative,  surely 
they  «i ust  be  accepted.     Now,  is  it  in  the  smallest  degree  likely  that  this  great, 
far-seeing  power,  the  most  eminently  practical,  the  least  visionary  that  the  world 
ever  saw,  can  expect  to  reduce  an  American  and  an  Anglo-Saxon  republic  to 
vassalage,   by  means  of  a  commercial  treaty?     How  long,  if  it  imposed  any 
terms  oppressive  of  Texas  for  the  benefit  of  E-igland,  could  it  be  expected  to 
last?     She  does  not  trust  the  uncertain  faith  of  Texas  now,  when  she  is  weak, 
will  it  be  better  when  she  has  started  up  into  the  vigor  of  wealth,  success,  and 
populousness,  all  certain  to  come  about  by  the  means  lent,  by  the,  security  and 
confidence  bestowed?     Her  colonies   on   our  continent,  already  infected  with 
radicalism,  and   endangered    by  the   democracy  propagated   from   our  shores, 
threaten  every  day  to  foil  off  from  h-r,  are  a  burden  rather  than  a  benefit,  and 
cost  her  much  more  than  they  come  to.     National  pride  alone  induces  her  to 
retain  them.     Is  she  likely,  then,  to  burn  her  fingers  with  new  dependuncies, 
planted  by  us,  and  reeking  with  more  than  Republicanism,  more  than  Democracy, 
with  repudiation  ?     Can  she  trust  men  filled  with  so  many  antipathies  to  her  in- 
stitutions,^- is  it  possible  that  any  thing  short  of  the  last  public  distress  can  have 
induced  Texas  to  cherish,  in  any  seriousness,  the  idea  of  coming  under  England's 
monarchical  rule?     Sad  as,  in  England,  is  the  opinion,  unjustly,  but  somewhat 
naturally,  entertained  of  even  the  best  of  us,  in  what  light,  I  pray  you,  must  she 
look  upon  people  considered  by  her  the  winnowings,"which  the  fan  of  the  law 
has  blown  from  our  land? 

But  consider  the  broad  eye  of  English  policy  is  supposed  to  see  everything. 
Is  it  probable,  then,  if  she  values  her  West  India  possessions,  that  she  will  ven- 
ture to  place  in  such  domestic  connexion  with  them,  a  source  from  which  will  at 
once  gush  into  them  every  idea  most  pernicious,  most  fatal  to  her  power  there? 
I  can  imagine  no  step  more  certain  soeedily  to  snatch  from  her  all  that  the  Gulf 
washes,  or  the  waters  of  the  Caribbean  sea,  instead  of  giving  her  any  more  foot- 
hold on  the  mainland.  These  being  the  views  she  must  take,  as  to  the  question 
of  her  power  merely,  what  will  be  those  in  which  she  must  see  the  thing,  as  a 
question  of  her  trade :?  The  advantages  to  be  got,  and  those  to  be  lost  are  here, 
it  seems  to  me,  easily  measured — it  is  enough  to  say,  that  Texas  presents  to 
English  industry,  the  mart  of  not  above  200,000  inhabitants, in  order  to  dissipate 
all  this  part  of  the  Texas  theory  forever.  Will  England  quarrel  with  the  com- 
merce of  this  country  for  that  market,  or  such  a  market?  If  she  makes  a  treaty 
with  it,  bestowing  peculiar  privileges,  what  becomes  of  all  her  conventions  with 
Vis,  stipulating  admission  to  our  productions  on  the  same  terms  granted  to  any 
other  ?  Has  she  not  like  arrangements  with  every  body  else  ?  How,  then,  will  this 


18 

idea  of  her  extending  to  the  little  people  of  Texas  peculiar  privileges,  hold  water 
for  one  moment  ? 

1  have  thus  surveyed,  Mr.  President,  the  main  questions  of  our  competency  to 

acquire  Texas, in  the  manner  proposed— of  her  thus  to  dispose  of  herself— and  of 

the  form  as  to  either  in  which  the  thing  is  to  be  done;  together  with  the  most 

mediate  points  arising  incidentally  to  these.     I  have  shown  that  our  former 

right  to  Texas  is  an  error,  and  how  that  error  arose  ;  that  a  long  series  of  national 

acts,  originally  correct,  and  irreversible  as  long  as  we  attempt  to  preserve  the 

slightest  character  as  a  people,  utterly  forbids  us  to  recur  to  that  matter,  except  as 

an  historical  one ;  that  Texas  can  make  us  no  title  to  herself,  not  being  mistress 

f  any  thing  but  a  war,  and  a  debt;  and  that  these,  and  not  Texas,  are  all  we 

shall  take  under  this  treaty,  except  as  much  confusion  and  uproar  at  home  as 

ishonor  abroad.     Let  me  now  come  directly  to  what  the  treaty  itself  sets  forth, 

and  what  the  accompanying  pieces  that  form  what  we  are  allowed  to  know  of  its 

history,  substantiate  or  betray. 

By  its  title,  it  is  a  treaty  for  the  annexation,  not  the  union,  of  the   Republic  of 
1  exas  to  that  of  the  United  States.     Now,  what  was  to  hinder  it  from  beinj?  an 
annexation  of  the  United  States  to  Texas?     Constitutionally,  (he  one  is  as  pos- 
sible as  the  other,  inasmuch  as  the  people  have  not  been  consulted  about  either 
ir  her  sovereignty,  (which  is  alleclged  by  the  fact  of  our  entering  into  the  act 
L  her)  can  be  thus  extinguished,  so,  of  course  can  be  ours  ;  for  a  State  can 
but  be  sovereign.     In  the  eye  of  right,  its  size  can  make  no  difference  ;  and  as 
we,  not  1  exas,  were  the  solicitors  for  the  amalgamation,  1  hold  that  it  is  rather  we 
that  should  have  been  annexed  than  Texas.     I  need  hardly  repeat  that  as,  in  a 
lepublican  government,  the  sovereignty  is  in  the  body  of  those  who  are  citizens, 
their  mere  representatives  exercising  for  them  only  a  momentary  and  a  dele- 
gated power;  nothing  but  the  collective  will  oHbat  people,  deliberately  given 
d  distinctly  ascertained,  could  extinguish  or  aliena'e  that  sovereignty.     To  the 
reason  given  some  time  back,  I  may  add  another:  that  it  must  be°confessed  that 
a  people  is  always  such  when  it  chooses  to  be— has  always  the  rio-ht  of  beino- 
governed  as  it  likes.     It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  it  cannot  have  conveyed  away 
what  at  its  pleasure  it  has  again.     But  here  impossibility  lies  upon  impossibility  • 
I  exas  could  not  give,  we  could  not  take  her  sovereignty  by  means  of  a  treaty 
and  if  her  people,  eight  years  ago,  willed  to  unite  her  to  us,  that  would  not  au- 
>nze  the  present  act,  for  two  overwhelming  reasons:  first,  because  a  past  act 
an  act  of  last   year  only,  an  act  of  another  occasion,  is  not  valid  for  any  such 
mpose;  and,  secondly,  because  that  act  authorized  a  totally  different  thing 
namely    her  union  with  us,  as  a  Slate,  not  her  annexation  as  a  rr.ere  territory, 
rely  the  high  State  rights  doctrinaries  who  aim  at  this  thing,  intent  in  a  most 
xtraordmary  manner  on  their  present  object  only,  utterly  overlook  consequences 
not  only  fatal  to  their  own  favorite  opinions,  but  really  most  formidable  to  the 
ure  safety  of  all  government  upon  our  present  plans,  with  our  intended  limita- 
ns.     *  or  surely  a  foreign  State  can  claim  nothing  at  the  hands  of  this  Govern- 
M  or  Confederation,  to  which,  as  a  benefit,  our  own  would  not  be  much  better 
l  least  equally,  entitled.     Suppose,  then,  one  of  our  own  States  should,  for 
e  reason  or  other,  desire  to  give  up  her  sovereignty,  like  Texas,  for  a  price? 
suppose  Pennsylvania,  with  the  honorable  purpose  of  paying  her  debts,  should 
i,  we ^assuming  them  ?     Or  suppose,  again,  what  I  fear  is  much  less  probable, 
me  Slate  of  Mississippi  were  to  make  the  same  proffer  ?     Could  this  Govern- 
buy  ihem  all  out?     Why  not?     What,  should  hinder  it  from  lending  them 
»«7   as  nil  usurer  does  to  young  spendthrifts,  taking  mortgage  ufier  mort- 
e,  1111,1!  finally,  eating  them   up  with   interest,  it  forecloses  upon  them,  and 
s  them  in  ?     If  ij.can  open  a  shaving  shop  for  foreign  sovereignties,  surely  itv 


19 

can  oblige  a  brother.     If  it  can  speculate  in  the  foreign  article,  surely  it  can  deal 
in  the  domestic. 

The  preamble  proceeds  to  set  forth  lhaf  (he  treaty  has  been  concluded  in  con- 
formity wiih  the  almost  unanimous  vote  of  Texas  at  (he  adoption  of  her  Consti- 
tution, (1836,)  and  her  present  equally  unanimous  wish.  Now,  I  have  already 
shown  thai,  at  best,  the  first  fact  was  of  no  import;  that,  further,  it  was  untrue; 
and  it  is  notorious  that  the  second  assertion  is  a  mere  assumption  ;  about  as  valid, 
for  a  high  and  authentic  purpose  like  this,  as  it  would  be  for  an  election  of  our 
Chief  Magistrate  under  the  forms  of  the  Constitution,  to  say  that  John  Tyler  is 
elected,  because  John  Jones,  and  two  princely  youths  asseverate,  all  the  while, 
that  he  is  the  people's  undivided  choice.  But  again,  all  this,  as  a  statement  of 
the  motives  of  the  treaty  is  false,  because  even  to  Texas  the  motives  of  to  day, 
are  not  those  of  1836,  when  her  purpose  was  entirely  different  ;  while  the  pre- 
tences now  set  up  on  our  part,  had  then  never  been  imagined  even. 

As  if  the  mere  reiteration  of  what,  is  false  could  make  it  true,  the  1st  article  of 
the  treaty  goes  on  to  reaffirn  all  these  things,  as  thus;  {:  The  Republic  of  Texas, 
acting  in  conformity  with  the  wishes  of  the  people,  and  of  every  department  of 
its  government,  cedes  to  (he  Untied  Stales  all  its  sovereignties,  to  be  held  by  them 
in  fall  and  proper  sovereignty."  As  here,  however,  with  a  growing  confidence 
in  itself,  assertion  takes  a  fuller  swing,  let  us  see  precisely  what  this  comes  (o. 
The  "  Republic  of  Texas,"  as  thus  conveyed  to  us,  includes  all  between  our 
borders  and  the  Rio  Grande.  These  limits  embrace  Mexican  provinces,  of  which 
the  Senator  from  Missouri  has  given  a  skilfull  and  accurate  account,  with  his  well 
known  and  accustomed  ability.  According  to  (he  memoir  embraced  in  the  offi- 
cial documents  of  the  treaty,  the)''  contain  a  population  of  probably  some  300,000 
souls,  in  addition  to  that  of  Texas  proper.  The  latter  is  estimated  at  from  100,- 
000  to  200.000;  but  at  the  former  number  by  (heir  own  envoy,  G  neral  Hunt, 
in  183T.  Now,  putting  aside,  as  lost  in  this  bolder  stretch  of  false  asseveration, 
the  plain  fact,  that  Texas  herself  has  not  assented  to  such  a  treaty,  what,  have  we 
here  ?  Has  Tamaulipas,  or  Coahuila,or  Chiahuahua,  or  me  Eutaw  Band,  been 
consulted?  As  for  New  Mexico,  her  accession  to  the  surrender  must  be  pre- 
sumed to  have  been  signified  to  that  admirable  combination  of  war,  traffic,  and 
diplomacy,  (he  Sarila  Fee  expedition  ;  for  that  is  well  known  to  be  the  latest 
consultation  held  with  that  part  of  the  Republic.  I  should  noi  have  suspected, 
from  Mr.  Kendall's  account,  that  such  was  precisely  the  result  of  the  colloquies 
with  that  gentle  republican,  Governor  Armijo.  Here,  (hen,  it  strikes  me,  must 
be  said  to  be  from  three  fifths  (o  three  fourths  of  the  "  Republic,"  as  we  get  it, 
who  cannot  e,ven  be  pretended  to  have  been  even  consulted  as  to  this  cession  ; 
for  these  are  provinces  that  have  never  taken  any  voice  in  the  affairs  of  Texas, 
for  the  very  simple  reason,  (hat  neither  voluntarily  nor  by  compulsion  did  they 
ever  submit  to  her  sway,  or  join  in  her  institutions. 

Then  follows  a  long  inventory  of  many  airy  public  chatties,  which  we  shall  no 
doubt  take,  when  we  find  them.  They  sound  very  like  the  enumeration  of 
weapons  in  an  indictment  for  assault  and  battery,  where,  from  the  abundant 
caution  of  the  law,  almost  every  thing — as  slicks,  stones,  slaves,  and  other  imple- 
ments of  harm,  is  declared  to  have  been  employed, and  in  fact  every  tiling  with 
which  it  is  possible  to  beat  a  man.  "All  public  lots  and  squares,  vacant  lands, 
mines,  minerals,  salt  lakes  and  springs,  public  edifices,  fortifications,  barracks, 
ports  and  haibois,  navy  and  navy  yards,  docks,  magazines,  arms,  armaments,  and 
accoutrements,  archives  and  public  documents,  public  funds,  debls,  tax^s  and 
dues  unpaid  at  (he  time  of  the  exchange  of  the  ratifications  of  this  treaty."  Alt 
this  looks  a  great  deal  more  like  what  a  nation  should  and  might  have,  than  any 
thing  that  Texas  posseses.  There  are  said  to  he  marriage  contracts,  in  which  the 
bride,  though  as  poor  as  the  beggar's- maid  that  King  Caphitua  loved  and  dressed 


20 

off  in  borrowed  clothes,  has  castles,  hunting-lodges,  villas  and  hotels,  with  a  long 
rent-roll,  all  in  imaginary  lands  and  visionary  cities  only.  It  is  fit  (hat  the  bride 
and  (he  nation  should  he  supposed  to  have  these  things,  whether  she  have  them 
or  not ;  they  are  for  her  beauty,  or  her  dignity.  I  fear  that,  in  this  pompous 
schedule,  the  only  part  we  shall  ever  realize  is  the  last,  a  very  solid  body  of  that 
sort  of  public  wealth  which  is  usually  called  indebtedness,  and  a  very  plentiful 
lack  of  any  thing  to  pay  it  with.  Of  "  lots  and  squares"  there  may  be  lots,  but 
in  towns  little  more  than  ideal.  The  mines  and  minerals  have  not  yet  been 
worked,  through  the  omission  or  casualty  of  not  being  yet.  discovered ;  or  if  any 
exist,  they  are  surely  those  of  New  Mexico,  from  which  the  ingots  fly,  by  some 
strange  attraction,  into  a  very  different  treasury.  There  may  be  in  Texas,  a 
"salt  river ;"  but  I  have  never  heard  of  her  salt  lakes.  As  to  her  "  public  edi- 
fices, fortifications,  barracks,  ports  and  harbors,  navy  and  navy  yards,  docks, 
magazines,  arms,  armaments  and  accoutrements,"  that  figure  here  in  architec- 
tural splendor,  or  make  up  the  "  pride,  pomp,  and  circumstance  of  glorious  war," 
these  are  surely  put  in  for  the  flourish.  Now,  God  forbid,  that  I  should  laugh 
at  honorable  poverty,  national  or  individual.  That  of  Texas  is  not  so.  Let  her 
repudiated  bonds,  let  the  "unfortunate  difficulty  into  which  she  has  plunged  a 
brave  and  honorable  South  Carolinian,  to  whom  she  owes  still  more  in  gratitude 
than  in  money,  tell  that  tale.  Is  it,  at  any  event,  when  she  is  driving  a  bargain, 
that  this  long  display  of  titular  possessions  can  be  fairly  made?  Would  not  the 
plain  words,  all  her  u  public  property  and  domain"  have  been  equally  determinate 
and  far  more  modest?  And 'why  this  long  enumeration,  unless  to  catch  the 
popular  fancy? 

The  next  article  provides  for  erecting  Texas  into  a  State  as  soon  as  may 
be  consistent  with  the  principles  of  the  Federal  Constitution.     In  this  article  lies 
one  of  the  grand  frauds  of  the  whole  transaction,  as  every  body  knows.     It  is  a 
shallow  and  a  shameless  evasion  of  the  difficulties  known  to  attend  the  bringing 
her  in  by  treaty  as  a  Stale,  a  sovereignty.     To  avoid  these,   the  name,  not  the 
thing,  is  changed,  and  one-half  the  matter  only  is  openly  done  at  present;   but 
with  a  care  so  to  stipulate  it  in  this  article,  that  the  faith  of  treaties  maybe  invoked 
in  favor  of  the  very  fraud  of  a  treaty,  "  as  soon  as  may  be  consistent  with  the 
Constitution  !"     Need  I  say,  sir,  that  the  benefit  of  this  provision  may  be  claimed 
the  instant  you  ratify  this  treaty  ?     The  population  of  Texas  would  already  en- 
title her  to  one  representative  in  the  other  House,  and  that  is  the  first  and  main 
condition  to  the  right  of  being  admitted.     Nor  was  this  political  evasion  the  only 
one  meant.     Another,  fully  as  important  in  the  view  of  a  great  part  of  this  body, 
of  Congress,  and  of  the  nation,  was  to  be  accomplished — the  admission,  not  only 
of  a  foreign  State  into  this  Union,  but  that  of  a  foreign  slave  Slate.     To  the, 
latter,  it  was  felt  that  insuperable  objections  of  feeling  lay,  in  addition  to  those 
of  constitutionality.     But,  as  now  done,  the  constitutional  bar  is  to  be  got  over 
by  her  consenting  for  a  moment  to  be  called  a  territory  ;  while  the  slave  question 
is  silently  passed  over  by  the  same  means.     Here,  sir,  are  some   25,000  slaves 
imported  by  a  treaty,  a  vast  and  wholesale  operation,  such  as  even   Cuba  and 
Brazil  never  witnessed,  and  as  utterly  against  our  subsisting  laws,  utterly  beyond 
any  warrant  to  the  treaty-making  power.     So  I  must  beg  leave  to  add  another 
clause  to  my  enumeration  of  points,  which  prove  this  treaty  an  original  nullity, 
and  no  treaty  at  all. 

Both  these,  sir,  are  abominable  and  dangerous  frauds  upon  the  Constitution, 
upon  the  people,  and  against  the  future  peace  of  the  Union,  already  abundantly 
put  in  jeopardy  by  questions  of  this  sort.  As  a  Southern  man,  the  citizen  of 
a  State,  who^e  present  safely  demands  that  all  the  public  and  national  guaran- 
ties be  strictly  preserved,  and  maintained  to  our  subsisting  interests  of  this  sort;\ 
as  the  public  agent  of  such  a  community,  I  will  do  all  that  I  can  to  see  that  no 


21 

injurious  hand  shall  be  laid  upon  rights  within  this  nation,  to  which  every  part 
of  it  is  faithfully  pledged.  But,  sir,  I  should  not  seek — the  wisely  moderate 
State  to  which  I  belong  will  not  seek — any  thing  beyond  our  present  good  secu- 
rities, far  more  likely  to  suffer,  than  to  gain,  from  any  rash  disturbance  of  them, 
under  the  hazardous  idea  of  extending  them.  Pray  let  us  hold  on  to  what  we 
justly  have,  and  not  drop  it  to  catch  at  a  shadow.  If  we  can  break  through  the 
Constitution  to  extend  slavery,  how  are  we  to  expect  that  like  breaches  will  not 
be  made  to  subvert  it?  This  scheme  is  one  directly  and  violently  to  raise  up  a 
new  agitation,  that  will  not  fail,  and  (I  say  it  with  a  solemn  repugnance)  is  but 
too  probably  meant,  to  exasperate  the  head  long  and  the  extreme,  in  opposite 
quarters  of  the  confederacy,  to  rush  into  speedy  disunion. 

I  would  not,  in  a  word,  Mr.  President,  seek  to  extend  slavery,  even  by  fair  means. 
I  know  of  none,  but  the  assent  of  the  common  body  of  parlies  to  our  contract  with 
each  other.  Of  these  parties,  nothing  like  this  can  be  asked  with  any  probabili- 
ty of  success,  nor  ever  without  an  adverse  probability  of  awakening  resentments, 
distractions,  far  beyond  any  good  to  be  accomplished.  If,  from  prudence  and 
for  peace,  I  would  not  now  attempt  such  a  thing  even  fairly,  it  may  be  judged 
with  what  alarm  as  well  as  horror  I  recoil  from  the  thought  of  a  fraud  like  this, 
aggravating  every  mischief  an  hundred  fold,  and  complicating  impolicy  with 
dishonor. 

The  next  article  secures  all  land  claims  valid  under  the  laws  of  Texas.  Of 
course,  if,  in  the  event  it  should  prove  to  be  true,  (as  it  no  doubt  is  to  a  large 
extent)  that  Texas  has,  for  consideration  received,  granted  her  whole  public 
domain  twice  over,  we  shall  be  bound  in  equity  to  the  claimants,  (now  our  citi- 
zsns,)  and  to  her  acts,  (now  our  own,)  to  make  good  any  deficiency  ;  and  thus 
may  have  to  piece  out  her  exhausted  soil  with  a  broad  parcel  of  our  own,  per- 
haps as  large  as  the  real  Texas  herself. 

The  next  provides,  substantially,  that  we  shall  give  back  to  Texas  what  she, 
apparently,  has  never  given  to  herself — every  sixteenth  section  of  the  public 
lands  for  purposes  of  education ;  that  is,  one-sixteenth  of  her  entire  soil  is  to  re- 
vert to  her,  or  an  equivalent  somewhere  else. 

The  next  article  assumes  all  the  debts  and  liabilities  of  Texas,  however  cre- 
ated. I  have  already  shown  that,  with  or  without  any  assumption,  we  became 
liable  for  all  her  engagements,  when  we  took  her  sovereignty,  and  that  the  faith 
she  has  violated  binds  us  just,  as  much  as  that  she  meant  to  keep.  Not  only  her 
acknowledged,  but  her  repudiated  debts,  then,  are  to  be  paid,  and  the  very  stock 
which  she  has,  created  and  sold  at,  perhaps,  but  a  fifth,  or  a  tenth  of  the  value 
expressed  ofi  its  face,  is  to  be  redeemed  at  par,  with  an  interest  of  eight  or  ten 
per  cent.  If  this  provision  of  the  treaty  is  ratified  here,  I  think  I  may  then  pro- 
pose an  appropriation  to  erect,  in  congenial  brass,  a  great  and  eternal  monument 
to  the  anli-assumptionist  States  and  party,  that  hold  it  constitutional  to  assume  the 
debts  of  a  foreign  Stale,  but  not  of  our  own.  High  on  its  glittering  sides  shall 
shine  many  a  lofty  name  of  Southern  strict  constructionists.  The  Secretary  of 
State  shall  lop  the  eminence,  as  the  acknowledged  chief  of  all  interpreters.  At 
his  feet  shall  blaze  the  titles  of  (he  Senator  from  Souih  Carolina,  and  of  the  fer- 
vid anti-assumpiiomst  of  Mississippi,  whose  State  herself  will  merit  a  peculiar 
distinction  of  being  much  readier  to  pay  the  debts  of  Texas  than  her  own.  A 
little  lower,  but  somewhat  emulous  of  her  honors,  must  be  emblazoned  the 
names  of  Illinois  and  Pennsylvania,  and  their  Senators.  Alabama  and  Arkan- 
sas, if  not  quite  so  high,  will  si  ill  be  eminent,  The  New  Hampshire  Senator, 
now  the  sole  surviving  "Northern  man  with  Southern  principles,'  shall  take  to 
himself  that  side  of  this  political  mausoleum  which  looks  north  ward.  Those- 
votaries  of  strict  construction,  those  apostles  of  anti  assumption,  John  Jones, 
Thomas  Ritchie,  and  he  of  the  Charleston  Mercury,  shall  daily,  at  noon  and  eve. 


22 

lead  a  devout  band  of  innocent  youths  of  party,  and  virgins  of  the  press,  to 
strew  flowers  about  it  and  to  hang  around  the  garlands- of  their  praise. 

I  should  like,  had  I  lime,  to  inquire  into  the  peculiar  causes  (unexplained  in 
even  that  lucid  hody  of  papers,  called  the  documents,)  which  have  led  to  the 
selection  of  a  single  gentleman  to  he  introduced  hy  name  into  the  benefits  of 
the  treaty,  to  the  pretty  little  tune  of  $250,000.  What  peculiar  merits  of  Mr. 
Frederick  Dawson,  of  Baltimore,  have  placed  him  so  far  above  all  other  creditors 
of  Texas,  I  cannot  stay  to  ask,  though  I  should  be  glad  the  Senate  knew. 

The  Oil)  article,  besides  settling  the  forms,  &c.,  under  which  liabilities  are  to 
be  ascertained,  provides  also,  with  great  discretion,  how  they  shall  be  repudiated. 
By  one  general  and  positive  provision,  all  the  contracts  of  Texas,  as  to  the  rate 
of  interest  on  her  debt,  are  set  aside,  and  their  evidences,  after  being  ascertained, 
replaced  by  United  States  bonds  at  3  per  cent,  per  annum.  But  their  present 
stipulated  rate,  as  declared  by  the  statement  of  Messrs.  Van  Zandt  and  Hender- 
son, is  10.  A  nice  little  repudiation  this,  of  only  66|  per  cenf.  on  the  interest 
Then,  on  the  principal — if  the  entire  amount  now  in  existence  is  found  to  ex- 
ceed 10,000.000,  the  claims  are  all  to  be  rateably  reduced  within  that  amount. 
Thus,  our  Government  is,  beyond  all  doubt,  making  itself  directly  a  party  to  an 
imperative  repudiation  of  interest,  and  a  contingent  spnnging  of  principal.  All 
this,  as  I  have  said,  is  for  debts  that  become  our  own,  if  we  merge  the  national 
existence  of  Texas  in  ours.  Before  that  act,  how  can  we  set  aside  her  contracts 
with  other  parties?  We  had  surely  no  power  over  them.  It  is  only  by  assum- 
ing them  that  we  could  take  any  sort  of  right  over  them.  The  repudiation,  then, 
is  oms,  not  hers;  and  the  more  plainly,  because  she  abandons  to  us  all  interest 
in  the  fund,  (the  land  sales,)  out  of  which  they  are  to  be  paid  :  so  that  it  is  for 
our  profit  alone  that  the  repudiation  is  to  be  made. 

By  the  next  article,  the  existing  Legislative  authorities  of  Texas,  her  Execu- 
tive and  Administration  are  abolished  and  overthrown,  her  army  ceases  to  exist, 
arid  her  fleet  that  was  sold  under  the  hammer  ceases  ;  nothing  is  left  of  them; 
all  is  stricken  out  of  being  but  her  judicial  officers  and  the  subordinate  Execu- 
tive ones.  It  is,  I  presume,  not  pretended  that,  the  Government  of  Texas  is  to 
be  made  to  cease  at  the  bidding  of  the  Executive  and  Senate  of  this  country. 
I  have  shown  that  there  was  no  act  of  her  people  that  can  seriously  be  pretend- 
ed to  have  set.  her  high  functionaries  aside  ;  it  can  then,  only,  be  their  own  power 
and  discretion  that  has  thus  terminated  their  functions  in  their  own  persons,  and 
transferred  those  functions  to  the  disposal  of  the  United  Stales,  and  annulled  the 
Constitution  of  Texas,  that  they  were  sworn  to  support.  If  all  this  is  legiti- 
mate, valid,  on  one  side,  so  is  it  on  the  other,  and  we  may,  therefore,  thank  our 
stars  if  it  proves  to  be  Texas,  not  ourselves,  which  was  thus  extinguished.  Nei- 
ther Government  possesses  any  such  Revolutionary  powers — neither  can  subvert, 
annihilate,  transfer  itself,  by  functionaries  of  constitutional  government  created 
for  different  purposes. 

Attached  directly  to  the  treaty,  the  main  features  of  which  I  have  thus  sur- 
veyed, comes  a  document  from  the  Texan  plenipotentiaries,  meant  to  show  the 
power  their  people  had  given  thus  to  annex  Texas.  It  only  shows  the  vei  v  reverse, 
inasmuch  as  it  exhibits  an  authority  for  a  different  thing,  upon  a  former  occasion, 
as  1  have  already  said.  That  authority,  to  the  whole  extent  given,  ceased  with 
the  failure  and  the  abandonment  of  thu  elfort  made  under  it  to  procure  from  Mr. 
Van  Buivn's  Administration  a  union  between  this  country  and  Texas  in  1837. 
In  lieu  of  such  a  popular  authority,  however,  it  offers  the  personal  assurances  of 
the  plenipotentiaries  that  they  have  "  the  most  abiding  confidence  that,  should 
the  annexation  be  consummated,  the  same  will  receive  the  hearty  and  full  con- 
currence of  the  people  of  Texas."  This,  then,  is  all  we  have  for  the  thing. 


23 

The  plenipotentiaries  next  furnish  statements  of  the  extent  of  the  grants  made 
of  their  public  domain,  and  of  the  condition  of  their  Treasury.  Of  the  former 
of  these,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  it  is  only  vaguely  described  as  a  "  late  report 
of  the  Commissioner  of  their  Land  Office,"  and  was  really  made  in  1841.  It 
cannot,  then,  be  in  the  slightest  degree  depended  on.  But,  besides,  a  glance  at 
the  most  recent  maps,  the  last  of  Mitchell's,  will  show  that  vast  grants  cover  the 
whole  surface  of  Texas.  Those  are  laid  down  upon  it,  like  the  names  of  coun- 
ties on  our  State  maps,  and  equally  serve  to  designate  territorially  the  whole  soil. 
Besides  these,  there  are  great  bodies  of  floating  grants  and  loans,  redeemable  at 
the  option  of  the  holder,  in  lands  .to  be  chosen  by  him.  Such  is,  in  general,  I 
apprehend,  the  real  condition  of  their  public  lands. 

The  Treasury  statement  is  equally  delusive.  That  which  is  furnished  is  only 
to  the  year  1840:  for  its  date  is  of  the  12th  January,  1841.  This  evidently 
relates  only  to  their  acknowledged  debts.  The  repudiated  are  left  out  of  view, 
and  also  the  issues,  said  by  well-informed  people  to  have  been  made,  and  put  into 
market  for  just  what  they  would  bring,  with  scarcely  a  record  kept  in  their  Trea- 
sury of  such  emissions.  From  the  character  of  many  of  their  functionaries,  few 
doubt  that  the  loosest,  possible  administration  of  their  pecuniary  affairs  has  gene- 
rally prevailed.  Certainty,  the  plenipotentiaries  say  that  "  it  is  known"  that 
since  "  the  above  date,  the  revenues  of  the  Government  have  nearly  equalled 
expenditures;  so  that  the  debt  has  not  materially  increased  ;  but  it  is  notorious 
that  until  the  present  annexation  speculation  began,  Texas  scrip  was  from  3  to 
7  cents  in  the  dollar,  and  that  their  navy  was  latterly  sold  under  execution — facts 
a  little  decisive,  I  take  it,  but  even  less  significant  than  the  following  very  frank 
or  very  unguarded  avowal,  let  out  in  this  very  document,  intended  to  exhibit  to 
advantage  the  state  of  their  finances.  Speaking  of  the  Treasury  report,  above 
cited,  (for  1840,)  the  plenipotentiaries  say,  "  since  the  date  above  referred  to,  no 
further  general  estimate  (of  their  debts)  has  been  made  at  the  Treasury  De- 
partment" These  are  their  own  words ;  and  I  ask  any  man  to  figure  to  him- 
self, if  he  can,  the  state  of  a  Treasury  in  which,  for  more  than  three  years,  not 
an  estimate  even  has  been  attempted  of  its  liabilities! 

Let  me  now,  from  these  main  papers,  turn  at  once  (for  I  must  hasten  forward) 
to  the  message  itself  which  conveyed  them  to  us,  sift  the  rights  which  it  alleges, 
the  Slate  reasons  which  it  sets  forth,  and  compare  it  with  the  further  series  of 
official  or  other  papers,  which  make  up  the  history  of  this  negotiation. 

The  President,  of  course,  sets  up  the  independence  of  Texas  as  so  established 
as  to  warrant  our  acting  as  if  the  struggle  between  her  and  Mexico  was  at  an 
end.  He  relies  for  his  justification,  partly  on  the  length  of  the  contest,  partly  on 
the  failure  of  Mexico  since  1836  to  attempt  the  re  conquest  with  any  serious 
mass  of  force;  yet,  further,  on  the  recognition,  by  various  great  Powers,  of 
Texas  as  an  independent  Government;  then  again,  on  the  inhuman  character 
which  the  conflict  has  assumed;  and  lastly,  on  the  political  necessity  imposed 
upon  us,  by  a  design  in  which  he  considers  England  busy,  to  subvert  our  slave 
institution,  by  means  of  bringing  about  emancipation  in  Texas.  I  need  scarcely 
say  that  if  the  last  is  a  sincere  motive,  or  real  justification,  it  is  of  a  nature  so 
prepondeiaiing  as  to  reduce  the  others  to  insignificance,  or  cast  upon  them  strong 
suspicion  of  being  employed  merely  to  palliate  the  wrong  upon  which  that  ne- 
cessity forces  us.  Nevertheless,  I  will  consider  these  several  points  according  to 
their  order,  not  their  importance. 

As  to  the  question  of  the  Independence  of  Texas,  a  few  plain  principles  of 
^common  sense  can  settle  that,  without  any  reference  to  treaties  ornaiioual  law. 

When  the  revolt  of  a  country,  heretofore  dependent,  takes  a  more  settled  form, 
by  its  establishing  a  provisional  government  of  its  own,  other  nations  do  not 
abandon  their  neutrality  towards  the  Government  from  which  the  insurgents 


24 

have  broken  off,  by  merely  recognizing  these  last  as  forming  a  distinct  people,, 
when  they  seem  fairly  to  have  retidere  !  themselves  so.  Nevertheless,  a  neutral 
must,  of  course,  confine  herself  to  peaceful  acts,  strictly,  as  long  as  the  contest 
really  is  such.  To  supply  either  party,  by  public  means,  with  troops,  or  ships, 
or  arras,  or  subsidies,  is  an  abandonment  of  neutrality  ;  and  so  is  it  equally,  to 
obtain  of  either  that  which  is  in  dispute  between  them.  Precisely  in  conformi- 
ty wiih  these  principles  was  the  conduct  of  the  Van  Buren  administration  in 
1837,  when  Texas,  (after  our  recognition  of  her  independence,  so  far  as  ive 
were  concerned,  so  far  as  we  could  do  it  inoffensively  towards  Mexico,)  solicited 
a  union  with  us.  The  Secretary  of  State  then  said,  on  the  part  of  our  Govern- 
ment : 

"In  determining:  with  respect  to  the  independence  of  other  countries,  the  United  States 
Lave  never  taken  the  question  of  right  between  the  contending  parties  into  consideration. — 
They  have  deemed  it  a  dictate  of  duty  an  I  policy  to  decide  upon  the  question  as  one  of  fact 
merely.  This  was  the  course  pursued  wiih  respect  to  Mexico  herself.  It  was  adhered  to 
when  analogous  events  rendered  it  proper  to  investigate  the  question  of  Texan  independence." 

And  a  little  further  on,  he  says: 

"  So  long  as  Texas  sha'l  remain  at  war,  while  the  United  States  are  at  peace  with  her 
adversary, "the  proposition  of  the  Texan  Minister  Plenipotentiary  necessarily  involves  the 
question  of  war  with  that  adversary." 

Of  like  effect,  and  of  authority  in  some  respects  still  higher,  are  the  following 
sentences  from  the  message,  about  the  same  time,  of  a  distinguished  Governor 
of  South  Carolina,  General  McDuffie,  a  near  kinsman  of  the  honorable  Senator, 
though  of  very  different  polifics.  Speaking  of  the  intention  of  Texas  to  apply 
for  admission  into  this  Confederacy,  he  says: 

"  In  my  opinion,  Congress  ought,  not  even  to  entertain  such  a  proposition,  in  the  present 
state  of  the  controversy.  If  we  rdmit  Texas  into  our  Union  while  Mexico  is  still  waging 
Svar  against  that  province,  with  a  view  tore-establish  her  supremacy  over  it,  we  shall,  by 
the  very  act  itself,  make  ourselves  a  party  to  the  war.  Nor  can  we  take  this  step  without 
incurring  this  heavy  responsibility,  until  Mexico  herself  shall  recognize  the  independence  of 
her  revolted  province." 

Again,  a  little  later,  what  said  the  Envoy 'of  Texns  herself,  when  moving 
this  question  a  second  time,  in  1842?  The  words,  considering  the  importance 
of  the  subject,  and  that  this  was  its  opening,  can  pass  for  nothing  short  of  those 
of  Texas  herself.  Mr.  Van  Zandt.  writes,  on  the  14th  December,  1842.  to  our 
Secretary  of  State,  to  urge  an  interposition  to  stop  the  war  by  receiving  Texas 
into  the  Union,  and  says,  distinctly  : 

"If  Mexico  believes  herself  able  to  resubjugate  Texas,  her  right  to  make  the  effort  will  not 
be  denied,"  &c.— (Senate  Doc.  341,  p.  17.) 

This  plain  principle  Mr.  Webster  copies  almost  literally  into  the  interposition 
which  he  accordingly,  on  the  31  st  January  following,  addresses  to  Mexico  : 

"  Mexico  has  an  undoubted  riirht  to  subjugate  Texas,  if  she  can,  so  far  as  other  States  are 
concerned,  by  the  common  and  lawful  means  of  war." — ^Same  Doc.  p.  70.) 

In  conformity  with  these  same  plain  facis  and  principles,  Mr.  Thompson,  our 
Envoy,  thus  repled_res  to  Mexico,  on  the  14th  March  following,  our  observance 
of  the  duties  of  a  neutial : 

"  In  obedience  to  your  instruction*,  I  then  alluded,  in  the  most  friendly  and  respectful 
terms,  to  the  character  of  the  war  now  going  on  between  Mexico  and  Tex  is,  and  told  him, 
(Santa  Anna,)  ilwt.  wki/s'  our  Gor-rnment  was  determined  to  oh^rvc  ih°,  ^f.ric'es/.  nen'ratify, 
in  that  war,  it  f e  t  that  it  was  its  duty  to  remonstrate,  in  the  most  respectful  manner,  with 
both  Governments,  against  predatory'forays,  really  not  war,  which  were  now  made  by  both 
Mexico  and  Texas,"  tec. 

Finally,  the  present  Secretary  of  State,  in  his  letter  of  April  18th,  (same  do- 


25 

iment,  p.  50,)  to  the  British  Minister,  directly  admits  every  thing  in  the  follow- 
ing avowal,  (p.  51  :) 

"  It  is  true  the  United  States,  at  an  early  period,  recognized  the  independence  of  Texas; 
but,  in  doing  so,  it  is  well  known  that  they  but  acted  m  conformity  with  an  established  prin- 
ciple to  recognize  the  Government  dv  facto." 

The  recognition,  then,  as  Mr.  Forsyth  said,  did  not  enter  into  any  question 
of  right,  and,  as  thus  limited,  hound  us  necessarily  to  the  observance  of  every 
neutral  duty,  until  that  question  had  been  settled  between  the  parties  to  it; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  it  implied,  of  course,  nothing  unfriendly  to  Mexico. 
The  distinguished  Senator  from  Pennsylvania,  who  has  lately  taken  a  promi- 
nent part  in  this  matter,  was  therefore  wrong,  when  he  resisted  in  this  body 
even  the  mere  recognition  of  the  independence  of  Texas,  as  likely  to  engage  us 
in  war  with  Mexico,  and  to  involve  us  in  national  suspicion  ;  for  neither  of 
these  facts  would  have  followed  a  mere  recognition,  as  long  as  we  went  no 
further.  Mr.  Buchanan  then  said,  by  way  of  objection  to  the  bare  recognition  : 

"  We  can  never,  with  any  proper  regard  for  the  welfare  of  our  constituents,  devote  their 
energies  and  their  resources  to  the  cause  of  planting  and  sustaining  free  institutions  among 
the  people  of  other  nations." 

Again,  he  said,  on  the  same  subject :  ibTflTy 

"  But  let  us  not,  by  departing  from  our  settled  policy,  give  rise  to  the  suspicion  that  we 
have  got  up  a  war  for  the  purpose  of  wresting  Texas  from  those  to  whom,  under  the  faith  of 
treaties,  it  justly  belongs.  Since  the  treaty  o/1819  with  Spain,  there  can  no  longer  be  any 
doubt  but  that  this  province  is  a  part  of  Mexico.1" 

The  citations  which  I  have  made  from  our  own  high  official  acts,  from  a  series 
of  declarations  addressed  either  directly  to  Mexico  herself,  or,  when  to  her  oppo- 
nent, none  the  less  pledges  to  Mexico  than  icpulses  to  Texas,  show  beyond  dis- 
pute, that  when,  in  last  November,  her  Envoy  put  in  a  protest  against  all  that 
the  Executive  was  then  preparing,  and  all  ih.it  he  has  since  accomplished  in 
this  treaty,  Mexico  but  repeated  to  us  our  own  language,  but  recalled  to  us  our 
own  pledges  to  her  and  the  world.  We  had  proclaimed,  again  and  again,  in 
solemn  and  decisive  forms,  that  we  coultl  not  incorporate  Texas,  (the  war  yet 
pending  between  her  and  Mexico,)  without  an  niter  breach  of  national  faith — 
without  making  ourselves  directly  a  party  to  that  war.  When,  therefore,  an, 
administration  was  found  abandoned  enough  to  occupy  itself  with  violating  all 
these  duties,  so  often  recognized — all  these  pledges,  so  often  given — what  could 
Mexico,  for  purposes  of  justice,  do  more  rightful,  or  what,  for  purposes  of  peace, 
more  necessary,  than  to  give  us  the  notice  of  the  consequences  authorized  by 
all  international  law,  and  as  clearly  authorized  by  so  many  voluntary  pledges 
of  our  own?  She  protested  then;  and  how  was  that  protest  received  ?  As 
nothing  short  of  an  insult  and  a  threat !  With  a  singular  mixture  of  audacity 
and  fraud,  the  Executive,  through  the  head  of  the  State  Department,  turned 
this  perfectly  legitimate  and  even  necessaiy  notice  into  a  pretended  offence, and 
made  the  simulated  wound  of  its  dignity  and  honor  a  pretext  for  the  refusal  of 
all  peaceful  arid  proper  assurances.  Busily  engaged  all  the  while  (as  we  now 
know)  in  finding  the  means  of  carrying  into  effect,  by  surprise,  against  our  own 
people  as  well  as  Mexico,  this  perfidious  plan,  all  the  indignation  of  outraged 
integrity,  all  the  sensibility  of  stainless  truth,  were  assumed,  to  cover  the  trickery 
until  iis  moment  of  calculated  success,  and  double  its  turpitude  with  this  inso- 
lent affectation  of  affronted  virtue  ! 

Nor  were  our  pledges  confined  to  mere  words,  however  solemn — to  declara- 
tions, however  sacredly  binding:  we  carried  into  an  act  of  the  highest  nature 
as  a  tie,  a  bond  of  faith  still  more  peculiar.  We  put  in  our  mediation,  as  a 
friendly,  an  impartial,  and  a  humane  power,  to  stay  the  strife  on  foot,  to  bring 


26 

it  to  a  safe  and  honorable  conclusion  for  both  parties  :  and  it  is  while  the  mat- 
ter has  thus  stood  suspended  in  part  by  our  intercession — while  Mexico,  trusting 
to  our  honor,  which  should  always  be  a  safe  reliance,  exchanges  arms  for  ne- 
gotiation— that  our  President  secretly  sets  on  foot  a  traffic  with  her  opponent, 
and  presently,  when  the  bargain  is  made,  alleges  for  our  justification  that  very 
truce  which  had  been  granted,  in  part,  at  our  intervention  !  Sir,  a  more  infa- 
mous fraud,  under  the  mask  of  amity,  was  never  committed.  Could  we  sanc- 
tion it  here,  the  name  of  "-Punic  Faith"  so  long  the  by-word  of  the  earth,  or 
Ligurian  or  Numidian  duplicity,  so  much  the  transmitted  abhorrence  of  man- 
kind, wherever  not  mere  oath  breakers,  will  grow  honorable  and  fair  beside  our 
own  ;  for  (his,  I  insist,  is  a  crime  without  even  a  single  bad  example  of  other 
nations,  of  its  kind,  to  countenance  it,  to  keep  company  with  it  in  ignominious 
fellowship.  Not  even  in  Texan  breasts  does  the  dishonest  thought  of  such 
villainous  collusion  seem  to  have  entered,  but  by  suggestion  from  our  State 
Department.  It  is  thence  that  the  lesson  of  iniquity  is  darkly  breathed  through 
Mr.  Murphy  into  President  Houston's  ear,  in  the  execrable  exhortation  which 
may  be  found  in  the  despatch  of  January  16tb,  (Doc.  341,  p*  47.)  It  is  in  the 
following  strain  that  those  speaking  in  the  name  of  this  country,  after  drawing 
the  parties  into  an  armistice,  endeavor  to  work  one  of  them  up  to  making  the 
very  negotiation  we  have  meditated,  an  utter  fraud  for  our  benefit: 

"The  pending  negotiation  wiih  Mexico  ought  not  to  present  any  difficulty,  unless  Texas 
is  prepared  to  go  back  again  under  the  dominion  of  that  power.  As  it  is  certain  she  will 
not  consent  to  this,  under  any  possible  circumstances,  the  result  of  that  negotiation  cannot 
affect  unfavorably  the  proposition  of  annexation  to  this  country.  If  Mexico  should  acknow- 
ledge the  independence  of  Texas,  then  Texas  will  have  an  undisputed  right  to  dispose  of 
herself  as  she  pleases;  and  if  Mexico  should  refuse  that  acknowledgment,  Texas  will  the 
more  need  the  protection  which  the  United  States  now  offers.  She  can  require  nothing  more, 
in  this  last  event,  than  that  the  United  States  shall  take  upon  themselves  the  adjustment  of 
her  difficulties  with  Mexico." 

In  every  mediation,  the  powers  interposing  their  good  offices  can  surely  be 
held  to  nothing  less  than  a  pledge  to  each  of  the  parties,  that  the  mediator  be- 
lieves both  sincere  in  their  intentions,  and  that  the  mediation  shall  not  be  turned 
into  a  fraud  upon  either.  Not  a  little,  indeed,  is  the  mediator  bound,  should 
fraud  ensue,  to  aid  in  punishing  the  party  so  abusing  the  good  office  done.  Ifr 
as  in  this  case,  there  be  several  mediators,  then  all  of  these  are  bound  to  a  mutual 
enforcement  of  good  faith,  and  to  sustain  against  any  serious  wrong  the  party 
made  to  suffer  by  perfidy  in  the  negotiation.  Such  is  the  position,  as  full  of 
danger  as  disgrace,  in  which  the  Executive  has  ventured  to  place  us.  Wer 
one  of  the  mediators,  are  tound  contriving  the  ruin  of  one  of  the  parties,  and  for 
this  purpose  persuading  the  other  not  to  regard  the  negotiation  on  foot ;  telling 
him  that  it  cannot  possibly  come  to  anything — that  he  can't  be  worsted,  there- 
fore, and  may  be  bettered,  by  conducting  it  without  any  sincerity  ! 

Nor,  in  the  shameful  management  of  this  business,  has  the  dignity,  the  self- 
respect  of  our  country  been  less  prostituted  than  its  morality.  Mark  the  despi- 
cable wheedling  with  which  the  Executive  approaches  the  Government  of 
Texas  ! — the  cringes,  the  congees,  the  coaxings,  with  which  we  are  made  to  seek 
to  propitiate  its  favors !  Hear  how  our  Government  is  made  to  whine  and 
supplicate : 

"The  failure  of  the  proposition  heretofore  made  by  Texas  for  admission  into  our  Union, 
should  not  be  allowed  to  influence  her  present  course.  At  that  time,  the  question  was  no* 
understood  in  this  country.  It  had  not  been  canvassed,  even  by  leading  politicians,  much 
*ess  by  the  people  at  large,  and  the  Consequences  dependent  upon  it  were  not  then  develop 
e&^s  they  now  are.  If  the  proposition  could  have  been  placed  at  that  time  in  the  light  in 
which  it  is  now  seen,  there  would  have  been  no  hesitation  upon  the  subject.  Indeed,  it  was- 
then  regarded  rather  as  a  question  of  time  than  anything  else;  for  I  am  well  assured  that  a 
majority  of  the  people  of  this  country  have  always  considered  the  annexation  of  Texas  t<? 


27 

their  lenitory  as  an  event  that  must-  happen,  sooner  or  later.  At  all  events,  no  other  ques- 
tion can  grow  out  of  the  failure  of  i he  first  proposition  than  one  of  mere  etiquette  or  national 
self-respect.  I  have  anticipated  and  provided  for  this  Supposing  that  Texas  might  fee' 
some  reluctance  to  renew  a  proposition  which  had  been  once  rejected.  I  have  invited  her, 
through  her  Charge  at  Washington,  to  enter  into  negotiations  up  »n  the  subject." 

Every  body  understands  that  this  Treaty  has  been  shaped  for  individual  aim? alone ;  that 
its  moving  cause  was  a  desperate  Presidential  speculation;  that  iis  main  agents  were  the 
gamblers  and  brokers  of  the  bankrupt  finances  and  fraudulent  land  slants  Of  Texas. — 
Through  legitimate  and  sober  negotiation,  necessarily  deliberate  and  quiet  in  its  movements, 
nothing  could  be  done  rash  enough,  extravagant  enough,  nor  noisy  enough,  to  be  brought  to 
bear,  in  popular  agitation,  upon  the  Baltimore  Democratic  Convention,  and,  through  its  de- 
cision, upon  the  next  Presidential  election.  Jn  this  one  great  aim,  all  public  purposes  were 
forgotten.  For  this,  we  were  to  take,  not  the  justest,  nor  the  most  feasible  method,  but  the 
suddenest.  'I  hat  might  certainly,  in  the  end,  plunge  us  in  endless  difficulties,  disaster,  dis- 
honor—every thing  most  to  be  deplored;  but  all  these,  though  speedy  effects,  would  be 
tardy  enough  only  to  injure  the  Un  on  after  they  had  served  the  momentary  purpose  of  the 
•President  yet  again  to  be.  'J  heir  iatal  consequences  were  at  least  not  swift  enough  to  arrive 
before  the  struggle  in  the  Democratic  Convention. 

Such  being  the  great  ruling  aim,  of  course  the  subordinate  questions  were  to  take  that 
form  which  would  best  suit  those  who  were  likeliest  to  lend  to  the  plan  the  animated,  the 
vigorous,  the  vehement  support  of  strong  individual  interest,  not  the  mere  affected  fervor  of 
patriotism.  Next  to  the  mighty  electioneering  interest  came,  therefore,  in  the  treaty,  what- 
ever could  enlist  the  zeal,  by  enlisting  the  cupidity  of  that  great  and  wide  spread  body  of 
adventurous  speculators,  who  were  dipped  deep  in  Texas  lands  or  Texas  bonds. 

I  pass,  however,  to  other  things.  Having  shown  that  rightfully,  this  Government  could 
not,  pending  a  war,  step  in  to  decide  between  two  States,  the  subject  of  the  dispute,  (which 
is  here  the  right  to  Texas,)  and  that  we  had  so  declared  in  every  form,  up  to  the  time  when 
this  intrigue  and  fraud  was  set  on  foot.  I  will  next  show  that,  in  many  parts  of  this  cor- 
respondence, there  are  the  most  direct  and  decisive  contradictions  to  the  President's  mere 
assumption  and  allegation,  that  Texas  is  able  to  withstand  Mexico,  that  Texas  has  obtained 
a  positive  and  permanent  independence. 

That  fact  or  assumption,  is  abundantly  disproved  by  evpry  circumstance  in  her  position, 
by  a  great  part  of  what  the  President  urges,  and  especially  by  the  alarm  which  he  spreads 
of  the  imperative  necessity  of  acting  "notv,"  because  Texas  must  otherwise  be  driven  upon 
very  hard  terms,  and  at  once,  into  the  arms  of  some  European  power.  But  what  foreign 
power,  having  trea'ies  with  Mexico,  would  be  faithless  enough  to  deal  with  Texas  as  our 
President  has  done  *  In  the  very  message  itself  that  accompanies  the  treaty,  the  President 
says,  "It  cannot  be  denied  that  Texas  is  greatly  depressed  in  her  energies  by  the  long  pro- 
tracted war  with  Mexico.  Under  these  circumstances,  it  is  but  natural  that  she  should  seek 
for  safety,  and  repose  under  the  protection  of  some  stronger  power."  Yet,  we  are  told,  this 
treaty  does  not  make  war  by  giving  that  protection  and  repose.  Again  he  says,  •'  1  repeat, 
the  Executive  saw  Texas  in  a  state  of  almost  hopeless  exhaustion."  What  exhaustion  ? 
That  occasioned  by  the  pending  war  with  Mexico,  which  we  are  now  asked  to  assume,  in 
direct  violation  of  our  treaty  of  peace  and  amity  with  Mexico,  and  thereby  to  disgrace  the 
United  States  in  the  eyes  of  the  civilized  world.  I  cannot,  and  I  will  not,  advise  and  con- 
sent to  the  ratification  of  a  treaty  for  any  such  purpose,  or  one  attended  by  such  consequen- 
ces. Were  I  to  de  so,  with  my  views,  I  should  be  laithless  to  myself,  to  my  constituents,  to 
my  country  and  my  God. 

What  says  Mr.  Secretary  Upshur,  in  the  very  outset  of  this  business  in  his  letter  ol  the  8th 
August  last  ?  "  Pressed  by  an  unrelenting  army  on  her  borders,  her  treasury  exhausted,  and 
her  credit  almost  destroyed,  Texas  is  in  a  condition  to  need  the  support  of  other  nations,  and 
to  obtain  it  upon  terms  of  great  hardship,  and  many  sacrifices  to  herself."  On  this  subject, 
our  Minister  in  Texas,  says,  ;"  Inasmuch  as  the  commissioners  of  Texas,  now  in  Mexico,  in 
treaty  or  negotiation  touching  an  armistice,  are  supposed  not  to  have  concluded  their  labors, 
and  it  is  clear  to  the  President  of  Texas,  that  so  soon  as  this  negotiation  in  relation  to  annexa- 
tion is  known  to  the  Government  of  Mexico,  all  negotiation  on  that,  and  all  other  questions 
between  Texas  and  Mexico  will  cease,  and  that  the  President  of  Mexico  will  instantly  com- 
mence active  hostilities  against  Texas,  which  Texas  is  wholly  unprepared,  by  sea  or  land,  to 
resist." 

I  presume  no  one  will  think  it  necessary  to  call  on  me  for  further  proofs,  that  it  was  per- 
fectly well  known  to  the  Executive  that  Texas  is  incapable  of  defending  herself;  that  her 
Independence  was  merely  nominal ;  that  her  condition  is  now  far  more  precarious  than  in 
1837;  that  she  has  progressively  grown  weaker  since  then,  and  Mexico  stronger;  and  that, 
in  very  truth,  her  Independence,  which  was  the  gift  of  the  individual  aid  and  sympathy  of 


28 

our  citizens,  ceases  the  moment  she  shall  no  longer  be  upheld  by  the  hope  of  help  from  the 
United  Stales. 

To  take  the  measure  of  the  credulity  of  folks  like  these,  especially  when  their  wishes 
and  designs  come  to  the  help  of  their  belief,  may  seem  somewhat  rash ;  but  still  as  I  do  not 
know  that  they  have  eaten  of  that  plant  which  was  said  of  old  to  make  men  mad,  I  must 
hold  it  utterly  out  of  the  question  to  suppose  that  they  can  have  swallowed  all  this  stufT 
about  Mr.  Andrews.  Certainly,  even  the  Secretary  ot  State,  who  first  seized  upon  the 
thing,  saw  full  well  the  extreme  nonsense  of  it,  in  one  of  its  main  points;  and,  in  remarking 
upon  it  in  his  letter  to  Mr.  Murphy  of-  the  8th  August  last,  after  repeating  the  statement  of 
the  "  private  citizen  of  Maryland,"  he  admits,  in  the  very  oatset,  "  that  there  is  some  diffi- 
culty in  comprehending  the  terms  of  the  proposition  as  stated,"  which  is  as  good  as  to  say 
that  it  is  nonsense.  And  so  it  surely  is  ;  for  what  is  the  plan  ?  "  That  an  English  compa- 
ny should  be  raised,  and  pay  Texas  for  her  slaves."  Here  one  would  think  was  the  end  of 
the  bargain  ;  for  when  equivalents  are  to  be  interchanged,  what  more  is  to  be  done  ?  Texas 
here  would  give  up  her  slaves,  and  the  English  association  its  money — so  one  would  say. 
But  this  is  far  from  being  the  result ;  for  Texas  has  paid  for  the  money,  thus  far,  only  in 
slaves  ;  whereas  she  is  to  pay  over  again  in  lands  !  Nor  is  that  all;  when  she  has  thus 
paid  twice  over,  it  is  but  a  loan  after  all ;  and  the  English  Government  is  to  aid  the  third 
operation,  to  come  in  as  a  guarantee  of  the  interest!  Of  course,  then,  the  principle  still 
remains  against  Texas  as  a  debt !  Well  might  the  Secretary  confess  that  there  were  some 
obscurities  in  the  plan  !  Yet  that  is  far  from  hindering  his  blazing  out  upon  it,  and  making 
it  not  merely  the  corner-stone,  but  the  entire  foundation  of  a  mighty  national  affair.  Nor 
does  it  become  a  whit  more  rational,  in  the  corrected  version  which  Mr.  Murphy  under- 
takes to  give.  In  it,  again,  the  Texans  are  first  to  give  their  slaves  to  the  full  value  of  a 
loan,  and  then  to  grant,  in  addition,  a  vast  amount  of  lands,  so  large  as  to  form  a  future  fund 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery  all  over  the  United  States  !  The  main  difference  which  he 
makes  is,  that  the  British  Government  was  to  guarantee,  not  Texas,  but  the  punctuality  of 
her  own  citizens  ;  and  really  I  do  not  see  that  there  was  any  thing  very  alarming  in  that, 
though  much  extremely  improbable.  Such  is  this  strange  tale;  and  though,  as  I  have  said, 
the  Secretary  evidently  sees  its  folly,  yet  what  does  he  do?  Inquire  into  it  ?  Not  at  all. 
Resort  to  the  British  Government  for  explanations  ?  By  no  means.  Instantly,  a  letter  full 
of  simulated  alarms  is  written  to  Mr.  Murphy.  To  the  English  Minister  here,  or  to  his 
court,  not  a  word  is  said,  not  a  syllable  to  Mr.  Everett,  until  just  one  month  and  twenty 
days  after  the  first  letter  to  Mr.  Murphy,  the  overture  to  the  whole  opera  that  has  be  n  sung 
us  since,  and  in  which  (as  I  am  told  is  usual  in  overtures)  the  rudiments,  or  what  musicians 
call  the  motives  of  the  whole  peice  may  be  found.  This  idle  tale,  then,  discredited  by  him* 
self,  is  made,  with  not  the  smallest  attempt  to  fathom  it,  the  basis  of  all  these  proceedings. 
It  is  not  till  fifty-one  days  afterwards,  the  28th  September,  that  Mr.  Everett  is  directed  ta 
look  into  the  affair  ;  and  on  the  16th  October,  just  eighteen  days  after  that,  when  yet  Mr. 
Everett  could  but  just  have  got  the  despatch,  we  learn,  from  the  note  to  Mr.  Van  Zandt, 
that  the  Executive,  in  view  of  "  recent  occurrences  in  Europe,"  had  made  up  his  mind 
to  invite  Texas,  in  all  haste,  to  be  annexed  to  the  United  States !  Meantime,  with  all 
his  precautions  not  to  diminish,  by  inquiry,  the  small  pretences  on  which  he  has  seized, 
the  Executive  has  got  some  information  on  the  subject.  He  has  learnt  by  Mr.  Murphy's 
letter  of  the  24th  September,  that  Mr.  Andrews  had  been  driven  out  of  Texas  by  its  popu- 
lace, as  soon  as  they  heard  of  what  he  had  been  about,  and  the  envoy  himself  expressly 
entitles  the  whole  affair,  "  the  ridiculous  transaction  ?  layed  off  in  London"  Nor,  indeed, 
did  Mr.  Upshur  himself  attach  any  real  consequence  to  it;  for  in  his  despatch  on  the  sub- 
ject to  our  Minister  at  Mexico,  on  the  18th  November,  he  directly  admits  that  there  is  no 
proof  of  any  English  design  such  as  he  was  not  only  imputing,  but  acting  upon  ;  for  he  says, 
*'  I  have  no  sufficient  reason  to  suppose  that  England  desirec  to  acquire  it,  (Texas,)  but  the 
subject  in  all  ils  bearings  is  of  deep  interest  to  the  United  States."  Thus,  sir,  disappears^ 
before  a  little  scrutiny,  all  these  phantoms  of  English  abolition  in  Texas.  Nothing  re- 
mains of  them  but  a  parliamentary  flourish  of  a  man  of  no  high  repute  in  England,  Lord 
Brougham,  some  general  declarations  by  the  Premier,  such  as  Premiers  must  always  make 
when  popularity  demands  it,  and  the  frank  avowal  of  Lord  Aberdeen  to  Mr.  Everett,  that 
the  Government  had  been  solicited  to  stand  guarantee  to  Texas,  on  a  loan  offered  by  the 
Abolition  society,  but  had  refused;  and  that  it  had  suggested  to  Mexico  to  connect  the  ad- 
mission of  the  Independence  of  Texas  with  the  abolition  of  slavery  there;  but  that  Mexico 
had  refused  to  listen  to  the  suggestion,  and  that  it  had  not,  therefore,  been  renewed. 

I  take  it,  therefore,  that  all  this  official  history  of  the  motives  and  the  rise  of  this  proceed- 
ing is  entirely  false,  meant  but  to  mislead.     Nor  are  we  without  proof  of  the  fact,  a  great  \ 
deal  more  substantial  than  the  Executive  concludes  treaties,  sends  out  military  and  naval   (t 
forces,  and  puts  us  in  a  state  of  war  upon.     In  other  times,  that  which  I  am  about  to  cite, 
however  well  shown  by  facts  to  be  authentic,  would  scarcely,  from  its  mere  form  (a  news- 


29 

iper  communicatien)  have  been  brought  into  the  Senate.,  but  now  things  infinitely  less  fit 
to  be  produced  are  brought  here  upon  the  gravest  occasion,  and  I  surely  need  not  hesitate 
to  give  what  I  take  to  he  the  true  secret  history  of  this  Texas  treaty. 

An  annexation  meeting  was  lately  attempted  in  the  venerable  town  of  Williamsburg, 
Virginia,  the  capital  in  some  sort  of  the  former  judicial  circuit  of  the  original  negotiator 
of  this  treaty.  At  it,  among  others,  appeared  Judge  (now  Professor)  Beverly  Tucker,  of 
William  and  Mary,  whose  extreme  intimacy  and  whose  close  coincidence  of  political  opin- 
ions and  purposes  with  Mr.  Upshur,  various  members  ef  this  body  perfectly  understand. 
The  Professor,  upon  this  occasion,  entered  into  a  recital  of  the  true  origin  of  this  matter, 
claiming  himself  to  have  set  it  on  foot.  The  outline  of  what  he  told  ha§  been  reported  and 
publ  shed,  about  two  weeks  since,  in  the  Richmond  Whicr.  It  is  no  do,ubt  faithful,  since 
though  exceptions  have  been  subsequently  sent  in  and  published  to  other  parts  of  the  re- 
port, the  fidelity  of  this  portion  of  it  remains  unirnpeached.  An  abstract  is  as  follows  : 

"  Having  first  avowed  his  intimate  acquaintance  with  this  whole  subject,  and  that  he  possessed  peculiar 
opportunities  for  being  informed  upon  it,  he  stated  that  the  FIRST  proposition  for  annexation  was  made  to 
him,  and  BY  him  next  made  to  the  late  distinguished  Secretary  of  State,  Judge  Upshur.  He  stated  that  he 
owned  a  large  tract  of  land  in  Texas,  and  one  half  of  about  GO  slaves,  in  partnership  with  a  certain  gentle- 
man there  (name  not  recollected)  of  whom  he  spoke  in  the  highest  terms  ;  that  this  gentleman,  in  a  letter 
written  some  time  in  the  year  1843,  mentioned  the  subject  of  annexing  Texas  to  the  American  Union ;  that 
he  ( Professor  T)  immediately  caught  the  idea  and  at  once  opened  the  subject  to  his  friend  Judge  Upshur  ;  that 
Judge  U.  as  eagerly  took  hold  of  an  idea,  declaring  in  a  private  letter  that  he  was  the  only  man  in  the  Union 
who  could  do  the  thing— that  he  could  show  the  Northern  people  that  annexation  was  their  interest,  and  as 
thia  was  the  weak  point  of  a  Yankee,  there  could  be  no  difficulty  in  reconciling  the  Yankees  to  annexation  ; 
but  if  ihis  could  not  be  done,  let  things  corne  to  the  wor»t.  These  fac  s  were  given  from  priva  e  letters 
which  had  passed  between  Professor  i'ucker  and  Judge  ITpshur,  and  was  communicated  with  egotistical 
complaisance  and  evident  pride,  as  if  the  communicator  was  desirous  to  have  the  world  know  that  he  and 
his  friends  were  alone  entitled  to  the  glory  of  starting  this  great  project  oj[  annexation  ! 

"  I  must  state  another  fact  which  wiil  illustrate  the  spirit  with  which  thi.s  matter  was  undertaken  by  one 
of  the  distinguished  actors  in  it,  the  country  has  a  right  to  know  it.  Professor  Tucker  stated  among  other 
things  of  a  like  character,  that  Judge  Upshur  had  declared  that  if  he  could  find  one  man  in  Congress  with 
firmness  enough,  he  would,  at  the  next  session  of  Congress,  bring  things  to  a  direct  issue  between  the 
North  and  the  South." 

This  latter  part,  it  must  be  confessed,  smacks  not  a  little  of  those  resolutions  from  Beau- 
fort, South  Carolina,  which  all  have  read  with  astonishment  and  pain,  and  with  the  open 
declarations  of  many  of  the  leading  presses  of  the  South  Carolina  party,  especially  their  or- 
gan here,  which  has  declared  that  Texas  was  to  be  preferred  to  the  Union.  Allow  me  ta 
examine  that  position  for  them,  and  to  see  what  a  new  Southern  Confederacy,  founding  its 
existence  on  an  act  of  rapine  like  this,  and  on  a  violent  disruption  of  its  previous  national 
ties,  would  be. 

Let  us  suppose,  for  a  moment,  that  what  cannot  .well  happen  without  a  violent  convulsion- 
is  nevertheless  brought  about  without  any,  and  that  a  separate  Confederacy  quietly  estab- 
lishes itself  through  all  the  States  West  and  South,  to  the  Ohio.  The  good  which  is  to 
follow  for  its  people  shall  be,  lor  the  sake  of  argument,  security  to  slave  institutions  at  large, 
Free  Trade,  the  opening  to  migration  of  a  new,  a  fertile,  and  a  highly  genial  region,  and  an, 
advanced  value  of  slave  property,  as  the  consequence  of  all,  but  of  the  last  especially.  Let 
us  see  how  these  causes  will  work. 

If  slaves  advance  in  price,  that  cannot  be  in  countries  of  exhausted  soil,  already  stocked 
with  them,  or  in  those  where,  from  climate,  the  sugar  and  cotton  culture  cannot  be  carried 
on  in  competition  with  the  rich  soils  in  the  lower  valley  of  the  Mississippi  and  beyond. — 
They  will,  then,  only  rise  in  price  in  Maryland,  Virginia,  North  and  South  Carolina,  Geor- 
gia, Tennessee,  and  Kentucky,  because  they  will  be  sold  to  be  carried  away.  A.nd  as  a  rise 
in  their  value  will  make  a  larger  capital  necessary  to  carry  on  planting  where  it  is  already 
unprofitable,  of  course  ihis  latter  cause  will  hasten  their  rapid  transfer  South,  by  adding  to- 
the  cost  with  which  slave  labor  must  be  carried  on  North. 

They  will  be  swept  off',  then,  in  but  a  short  time,  and  the  very  States  where  this  scheme 
pretends  to  secure  the  permanence  of  slave  property  will  be  stripped,  within  four  or  five 
years,  of  all  slave  property  whatever.  With  them  will  go  a  large  body  of  their  masters, 
nearly  all  averse  in  the  extreme  to  turn  wholesale  slave-sellers,  and  attracted  by  the  cheap 
lands  and  large  profits  of  the  new  country.  Such  numbers  will  probably  yield  to  these  in- 
•  ducements,  that,  from  some  parts  of  Virginia,  a  great  portion  of  North  Carolina,  and  nearly 
all  South  Carolina  and  Georgia,  except  the  rice  lands,  it  will  be  a  migration  almost  en  masse, 
and  hardly  any  will  remain  that  can  get  away. 

Thus,  then,  by  a  speedy  change  in  the  labor  and  property  of  the  seven  Sfates  I  have  men- 
tioned, they  will  take  just  the  same  relation  to  the  slave  interest  south-west  of  them  as 
Pennsylvania  and  the  North  now  bear  to  the  planting  States ;  and  abolition,  sure  to  exist 

where  there  are  no  slaves,  will  occupy  the  northern,  and  plague  and  threaten  the  Southern,. 

part  of  the  new  Confederacy,  just  as  of  old.     In  the  great  tract  thus  abandoned  by  much  of 

its  proprietary,  and  more  of  its  laboring  population,  lands  must  of  course  sink  prodigiously 


30 

in  value.  At  last,  for  want  of  purchasers,  many  of  them  will  be  abandoned  by  their  own- 
ers, one  half  whose  slaves  alone  will,  upon  lands  bought  in  Texas  with  the  other  half,  make 
far  better  crops  lhan  nil  on  the  worn  and  ill-used  soil  they  now  exhaust  rather  than  culti- 
vate. Nor  is  ihis  all:  another  very  serious  cause  of  depreciation  will  act.  In  the  greater 
part  of  the  Southern  States,  there  is  a  heavy  public  debt.  On  a  diminished  population  and 
depreciated  property,  that  debt  (which  even  now  they  can  hardly  provide  fur;  will  fall  with 
a  terrible  weight  of  taxes ;  and  these  will  operate  strongly  to  induce  fresh  migration  into 
a  new  country  whose  debt  has  been  assumed,  and  where  there  will  be  light  taxes  only.— 
This  effect  cannot  but  happen  as  to  Virginia,  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Alabama,  my  own 
State,  Arkansas,  Louisiana,  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois. 

There  may,  in  a  word,  be  benefits  in  the  plan  to  Texas — very  great  benefits;  but  they 
will  be  such  as,  to  fill  her  veins,  will  drain  the  very  life-blood  of  most  of  the  present  South-: 
ern  States  There  may  be  advantages  to  those  who  are  to  break  up  and  to  leave  their  native 
communities;  but  to  those  who  remain  and  cling  faithfully  to  them,  the  results  will  be  de- 
plorable. Property  v\ill  decline;  cultivation  will  cease  in  its  main  branches;  new  objects 
and  methods  of  tillage,  new  forms  of  industry,  will  have  to  be  sought ;  all  improvement  will 
cease;  the  whole  society  will  go  backward  for  a  time;  and  every  thing,  in  a,  word,  will  de- 
cline, except  taxes,  and  perhaps  repudiation. 

From  this  changed  order  of  things,  what  relief  will  Free  Trade  bring,  where  the  staples 
that  bred  the  desire  of  it  have  ceased  to  be  grown  in  these  nearer  Southern  States?  They 
will  be  planting  States  no  longer;  and  their  soil  and  climate  tit  them  little  for  farm- 
ing1, for  grazing,  or  for  grain-growing  Producing  no  longer  anything  for  exportation, 
what  sort  of  a  boon  will  Free  Trade  be  to  them  ?  It  strikes  me  that  it  will  be  not  a  little 
like  a  present  of  mustard  to  a  "nan  who  has  no  meat,  or  ruffles  to  one  without  a  shirt.  But, 
sir,  to  them,  in  such  a  Confederacy,  yet  another  condition  of  things  must  ensue.  In  the 
States  which  I  have  described,  in  the  necessities  imposed  by  their  position,  it  is  among  them 
that  manufactures  must  spring  up,  as  the  most  profitable  employment.  In  this,  then,  again, 
they  will  occupy,  as  in  regard  to  slavery,  the  very  same  relation  to  the  States  beyond  them 
as  New  England  now  does  to  the  South.  The  existing  sectional  opposition  of  interests  will 
thus  start  up  afresh  between  the  extremeties  of  the  new  league;  and  the  present  Free 
Trade  men  (including  some  of  the  distinguished  gentlemen  whom  I  see  around  me,)  will, 
unless  they,  in  the  meantime,  have  gone  to  Texas,  become  violent  advocates  of  a  protective 
lariff—  unabated  enemies  of  Free  "1  rade. 

Alieady,  sir,  from  the  causes  I  have  mentioned,  acting  only  with  less  intensity,  this  very 
state  of  things  is  coming  about.  Maryland  is  already  a  Tariff  State  ;  Virginia,  North  Caro- 
lina, and  Georgia,  are  rapidly  becoming  so;  my  own  State  and  Kentucky  have  shown  how 
they  regard  that  policy.  What  1  have  said  is  but  the  history  of  what  we  have  seen  and  are 
seeing,  the  facts  on.y  compressed,  by  more  sudden  and  stronger  causes,  into  a  few  years'  space. 

Such  and  so  conclusive  are  the  economical,,  the  pecuniary  objections  to  this  scheme  ot 
Southern  Confederacy:  but  there  is,  further,  a  political,  I  might  almost  say  a  physical  diffi- 
culty, of  which  these  statesmen  have  not  considered,  though  it  is  not  less  obvious  than  it  is 
insuperable.  Near  its  very  centre,  their  intended  territory  is  crossed  by  a  mighty  valley, 
itsel  ,  at  no  distant  day,  an  empire.  Do  they  expect  to  bridle,  with  what  will  be  compara- 
tively but  a  little  Atlantic  border,  that  wide  and  powerful  region  ?  Do  they  think  to  give 
law  to  the  entire  Mississippi,  by  seizing  upon  its  mouth  ?  Sir,  the  race  that  possesses  that 
great  stream,  is  not  one,  in  point  of  either  spirit  or  strength,  to  be  tamed  to  the  will  of  any 
builder  of  political  castles  in  the  air,  that  thinks,  at  a  word,  to  lock  them  in  from  the  sea. 
That  vast  valley  must  have  one  common  social  destiny  ;  nor  will  the  arrangements  which 
schemers  make,  in  South  Carolina  or  Texas,  at  their  ease,  pluck  away  from  the  Great  West 
its  passway  abroad,  and  reduce  it  to  dependence.  No  !  'J  he  strong  do  not  follow  the  for- 
tunes ot  the  weak ;  and  if  the  one  or  the  oiher  is  to  submit,  the  Great  West  is  much  more 
like  to  give  the  law  to  this  new  realm,  than  to  receive  the  law  from  it.  I  have  shown  what 
consequences,  what  new  social  arrangements,  this  entire  plan  would  work ;  how  surely  it 
must  empty  of  all  their  slave  population,  Kentucky,  Missouri,  Tennessee,  and  part  of  Alaba- 
bama.  Now  will  these,  after  having  been,  by  the  very  execution  of  this  scheme,  converted 
into  free  States,  and  will  the  many  and  populous  countries  behind  them,  consent  to  be  a  mere 
appendage  to  a  league  like  this  ?  Never,  sir !  The  entire  valley,  I  repeat,  must  ever  have 
a  common  political  destiny.  Its  natural  ties,  and  thsoe  of  habit  and  feeling,  bind  it  to  this 
Union.  f  'here  is  ever  to  be  a  Southern  Confederacy,  it  cannot  stretch  across  to  Texas,  but 
must  be  girdled  in  by  the  Mississippi.  Such  a  thing,  agitators  and  speculators  may  talk  of; 
but  I  do  not  think  any  man  here  will  live  to  see  it;  and  I  am  sure,  if  he  does,  he  will  live  to 
see  troubles,  disasters,  conflicts  ending  but  in  mutual  injury,  misfortune,  and  misery,  which, 
will  make  him  deplore  that  he  has  lived  so  long. 

I  think  I  have  thus  shown  what  will  be  the  special  benefits,  the  benefits  to  the  slave 
States  as  they  now  are,  which  this  thing  promises ;  that  it  will  transfer  a  large  part  of 


.. .. 


31 


i    p°PuIatiDn  and  wealth ;  that  it  will  break  down  the  value  of  their  lands;  that  it  will 
da  heavily  to  taxation  ;  that  it  will  revolutionize  property  and  pursuits  ;  that  as  it  will  only 
shift  the  slave  region  further  South,  and  convert  as  large  a  space  into  free  States  as  it  adds 
slave  territory,  it  will  leave  the  very  interest  for  which  all  this  is  to  be  done,  still  weaker 
than  before ;  that  if  dismemberment,  which  I  regret  to  say  seems  to  me  clearly  in  the  con-^ 
temptation  of  a  part  of  these  political  projectors,  ensues,  it  will  inevitably  reproduce  on  a' 
smaller  theatre  the  same  questions  of  protection  and  of  abolition,  the  same  sectional  strife, 
which,  in  an  evil  hour,  has  bred  the  disaffection  that  urges  men  to  this  design  ;  that  if  such 
lismemberment  come,  it  would  not  quietly  stretch  across  to  Texas  ;  that  a  war  for  the  low- 
er Mississippi  would  probably  follow  :  and  now  let  me  add,  that  I  see  no  possible  event  from 
such  a  war,  but  that  the  new  Confederacy,-  to  sustain  itself  against  the  superior  force  of  the 
rest  of  the  Union,  must  do  precisely  what  we  are  told  Texas  is  about  to  do,  and  in  this  very 
prudent  plan  for  the  permanent  security  of  slavery,  cast  itself  for  protection  upon  that  very 
\foreign  power,  whose  alarming  designs  of  abolition  are  made  the  great  bugbear  to  frighten 
us  into  the  jaws  of  this  plan,  and  drive  us,  by  terror,  into  crime  and  shame. 

But  advantages  of  a  more  general  nature  are  alleged,  such  as  will  benefit  the  whole  Union, 
They  tell  us  that  it  will  give  us  a  new  and  a  noble  territory;  that  its  peopling  will  offer  a 
fresh  mart  for  the  manufactures  of  the  North,  the  provisions  of  the  West,  and  additional  em- 
ployment for  our  Eastern  shipping ;  that  it  will  add  to  our  military  security  ;  that  it  will 
prevent  smuggling;  that  it  will  afford  scope  for  the  illimitable  Anglo-Saxon  propensity  to 


advantages 

we  are  to  pay  for  them.  I  should  still,  under  my  special  duty  to  my  own  State,  and  to  ma- 
ny others,  vote  against  a  measure  which  will  deeply  injure  them.  The  Union  is  well  as  it 
is,  and  has  much  greater  need  to  govern  itself  well,  to  manage  wisely  what  it  has,  than  to 
call  upon  a  large  part  of  it  to  submit  to  a  grievious  loss  with  the  object  of  merely  extending 
our  territory. 

All  know,  sir,  what  a  deplorable  system  of  farming  that  is,  where  the  landholder  grasps  at 
more  than  he  can  employ,  cultivating  most  wretchedly  a  large  surface,  while  the  skilful  til- 
lage of  but  half  as  much  would,  with  the  same  labor,  yield  him  a  larger  crop,  and  give  him 
an  improving  soil,  instead  of  one  growing  every  day  worse.  This  individual  propensity,  long 
the  misfortune  of  our  husbandmen,  is  now  rapidly  correcting  itself;  and  so  will  soon  do,  I 
trust,  that  kindred  national  rage  for  wide,  rather  than  well- managed  possessions,  which  mea 
have  largely  counted  on,  in  calculating  the  popularity  of  this  attempt. 

If  extent  of  possessions  is  to  stand  to  us  in  the  pla'ce  of  public  honor,  and  beneficence  and 
wisdom  of  sway,  still  we  must  yield  in  that  species  of  glory  to  Russia,  whose  arbitrary  rule 
covers  a  far  wider  surface  of  misgovernment.  Nor  shall  we  yet  at  all  equa*  Tamerlain  or 
Ghengis  Khan,  who  had  the  honor  of  reducing  under  their  absolute  domain  still  broader 
tracts.  Spain  herself,  whom  we  now  so  despise,  once  held  in  fee  almost  a  third  of  the  knowa 
world.  Her  thirst  for  misused  dominion  was  as  unscrupulous  as  ours  can  aspire  to  be;  her 
enterprize  as  active;  her  military  spirit  far  higher.  What,  then,  is  to  assure  us,  treading 
the  same  career,  from  the  same,  or  a  yet  speedier  fate  ?  There  are  surely  simple  lessons  in 
these  things,  which  every  citizen  of  a  land  like  this,  where  all  order  is  but  the  result  of  in- 
telligence, should  have  learnt — that  there  is  more  genuine  gratness  in  governing  wisely  evea 
a  narrow  territory,  than  in  stretching  ever  so  widely,  a  cruel,  an  unjust,  or  an  imcompeteat 
dominion,  that  only  acquires,  but  knows  not  how  to  rule,  to  benefit.  What  is  a  mere  em- 
pire of  disorder,  compacted  together  by  none  of  the  true  arts  of  sway.  It  is  preparing  but 
a  speedier  downfall  for  all  that  we  have  of  good,  or  right  or  happy.  "Already  we  have  cast 
the  wide  foundations  of  what,  if  we  persevere  in  the  sober  and  steadfast,  and  sure  greatness- 
before  us,  must  rapidly  become  the  noblest  government  that  the  earth  has  ever  seen.  Are 
we  to  abandon  the  brightness,  the  certainty  of  a  public  destiny  like  that  before  us,  for  a 
scheme  as  wicked  as  it  is  wild  ;  that,  to  compensate  for  the  general  abhorrence  with  which 
it  will  turn  the  eyes  of  all  nations  upon  us,  offers  us  no  probability  but  that  of  earlier  dis- 
ruption, and  decay?  la  all  the  past,  history  has  presented  one  uniform  truth — that  govern- 
ments must  be  oppressive  somewhat  in  proportion  to  their  extent.  Already  fierce  divisions, 
conflicts  of  interest  the  most  threatening,  warn  us  to  keep  within  our  present  limits,  and,  at 
least,  before  we  add  to  them,  to  compose,  to  consolidate,  to  unite.  At  this  instant,  the  very 
men  who  would  teach  us  to  dream  this  sad  and  perilous  vision  of  a  greatness  without  honor 
or  prudence  or  need,  are  many  of  them  intent  ou  demolishing  the  very  grandeur  to  which 
they  invite  you.  It  is  disunion  that  beckons  on  to  this  scheme  of  rapacity:  you  are  to 
plunder,  that  disunion  may  possess;  you  are  to  steal,  that  it  may.  receive  ;  you  are  foully  and 
faithlessly  to  wrest  Texas  from  Mexico,  in  order  that  disunio'n  may  be  furnished  with  a 
'broader  and  surer  basis  for  a  new  confederacy.  These  men  tell  us  that  they  themselves 
groan  under  the  curse  of  this  government;  and  in  ihe  same  breath,  that  they  pant  to  impart 


32 

xts  blessings  to  others  ;  they  rare  of  England,  and  her  teuible  designs  ;  and  what  are 
des:gns?  Apparently  nothing  worse  than  their  own  summum  b(mu>nt  Free  Trade,  the  acme 
of  atl  wise  policy !  But  if  the  embrace  of  England  be  so  terrible,  \vthy  seek  a  seperation. 
which  must  fling  them  at  once  into  her  arms  ?  I  remember  too  well  the  day  when  a  direct 
dissociation  from  us,  a  direct  association  with  England,  gave  them  any  thing  but  alarrnj^H 
days  of  nullification;  nor  have  their  thoughts  changed  since  then,  if  their  language  j^H 
prets  them.  As  little  can  I  (rust  their  promised  advantages,  in  the  new  region,  fc 
manufacturers,  our  provision  trade,  or  our  navigation,  Texas,  they  design  as  a  new 
men i  of  the  Free  Trade  region,  an  addition  of  anti-tariff  votes.  W  hat  will  the 
tion  of  ils  present  population  of  not  150,000  add  to  our  trade  ?  And  its  augmented 
lien  will  consist  of  but  our  own  citizens,  whom  we  already  supply.  As  to  the  pan 
trade,  they  themselves  boast  that  the  upper  regions  of  that  country  are  fit  only  furjj 
raising;  so  that  i:  is  likelier  to  be  the  rival  of  Kentucky  and  Ohio  abroad,  than  their 
tomer  at  home.  If  the  carrying  of  its  cotton  and  si  gar  is  to  employ  our  shippin  then  it 
must  be  at  the  expense  of  a  great  overproduction  of  the  first  of  those  articles,  with  which, 
we  now  glut  the  market  of  the  world.  In  short,  sir,  I  see  nothing  but  what  is  utterly  falla- 
cious in  the  object,  and  utterly  bad  and  disgraceful  in  the  method.  'J  he  entire  plan  is  a 
complication  of  rapine,  of  impolicy,  and  of  imposture,  such  as  i  had  trusted  never  to  see 
presented  for  public  favor  in  this  country,  by  any  that  presumed  to  set  themselves  up  as  the 
guides  and  ihe  lights  of  this  nation. 

To  Texas  he»seif,  meantime  sir,  I  give,  as  I  have  ever  given,  my  warm  sympathies  HI 
her  bravo  strugrla  for  t.-e  highest  privilege  to  which  a  people  can  rise — independence.  I 
acknowledge  the  kindred  blood  that  runs  in  the  veins  of  her  people.  Most  gladly  would  I 
see  her  free;  but  free  by  her  own  arms,  the  only  sure,  the  t>nly  noble  way  to  freedom,  such 
as  our  common  forefathers  trod.  I  have  no  confidence  in  any  liberty  that  is  the  gift  of 
others,  and  not  wrought  out  by  the  good  right  hands  of  the  free  themselves.  Even  them, 
sir,  the  successful  battle  field  may  have  won,  but  something  yet  nobler  than  valor  is  neces- 
sary to  keep  the  bright  attainment,  a  spirit  as  calm,  as  right,  as  wise,  as  pure,  as  order-loving 
as  it  is  brave,  and  that  knows  how  to  conquer  what  is  far  more  difficult  to  subdue  than  any 
foe  without— the  foe  within,  the  wild  tendency  to  misrule,  to  faction,  to  disorders  that  shake 
or  disgrace  the  State,  to  a  rage  of  personal  selfishness  or  corruption  that  heeds  no  claim  of 
country,  to  a  liberty  that  knows  little  of  private  morality,  and  nothing  of  that  true  public 
spirit  without  which  freedom  is  but  a  letting  loose  of  every  man's  hand  against  the  rest,  m 
ihe  ignoble  anarchy  of  parties  intent  only  on  pillaging  the  State,  and  of  leaders  without  ca- 
pacity and  without  the  thought  to  govern  any  thing  but  a  caucus. 

Most  gladly,  then,  were  there  no  such  things  as  national  honor  or  faith — were  treaties 
but  so  much  waste  paper — were  Constitutions  as  idle  within  as  the  great 
people  and  people  empty  without,  would  1  assist  Texas  in  her  struggle. 
spects,  and  my  good  wishes,  in  honor  of  many  men  really  aoble  and  brave,  w 
have  engaged  in  it.  1  yield  them  my  sincere  sympathies  and  best  wishes  jKn  lean,  at 
present,  yield  them  nothing  more.  I  will  not  set  my  feelings  above  an  hones^^^^^^Ht 
ray  duties.  I  will  not,  out  of  kindness  to  Texas,  trample  on  all  the  solen^^^^^K 
which  we  owe  to  faith,  to  peace,  to  justice,  to  the  Constitution,  to  this  Unios^^^^^Hfe 
principles  that  are  to  sustain  it,  and  to  its  people.  I  pretend  not,  however,  ^i^^^^^^Kj 
phetic  skill  of  politics  which  can  settle  questions  like  this  for  all  time  tocome.^|^^^Kj| 
effort  at  statesmanship  is  but  to  reach,  and  prudently  to  resolve,  the  question  now  to  be  acted 
on.  These  things  may  take  another  form.  Annexation  may,  at  some  day,  assume  a  shape 
neither  perilous  nor  dishonorable,  nor  coupled  with  any  of  those  sectional  dissentioas,  or  de- 
signs which  would  now  deter  me  from  it.  It  may  present  itself,  and  probably  will,  as  a 
question  of  expediency  alone.  {Should  it  so  come,  while  I  have  any  public  part  to  take  on  it, 
1  will,  as  now,  endeavor  calmly  to  examine  all  the  attendant  circumstances,  and  to  guide 
myself  in  action  by  them,  and  the  wishes  of  the  people  I  represent.  With  giving  my  vote 
against  ratifying  the  present  treaty,  my  present  duty  on  that  subject  will  be  performed. 


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